Self-described “Tokyo samurai doom band”, Hebi Katana have been clubbing listeners into submission with their monstrous riffs since 2020. Operating with a restless energy, the band have become a permanent fixture on the Tokyo live scene whist spreading their wings to play major cities in Japan, along with gigs in France, Italy and South America. Their fourth album is titled Imperfection and finds the band honing their craft to deliver seven earth-shaking songs that threaten to take things off the Richter Scale.
As you’d expect from a band releasing their fourth album, Hebi Katana certainly know how to make an entrance. A mellow guitar motif wafts through the air like cigarette smoke; it’s hypnotic and lulls us into a false sense of security and means that when the band kick in around the 30 second mark, they kick in hard. Like the love children of Black Flag and Black Sabbath, this is a brand of doom metal that’s played with plenty of vim and vigour. It’s more bad acid at Altamont Free Concert than Summer Of Love, and it swings with a real sense of danger. In fact, Black Sabbath are a definite influence on this band, but it’s more of a springboard towards something new rather than nefarious copycatting (and let’s face it, what doom band, indeed any metal band, doesn’t have a touch of Sabbath in their DNA?). The bowel-loosening bass rumble is all Geezer Butler, whilst the drums hit in that tight-but-loose way pioneered by Bill Ward. Similarly, the guitar riffs sound as if they were forged in a fiery furnace, yet when Hebi Katana put all these elements together a sound is created all their very own and Bon Nou couldn’t be anyone but themselves.
I have a penchant for three-piece bands; there’s a power in reduced numbers that creates a sound far bigger than the constituent parts, and that’s exactly what happens here. Listening to Dead Horse Requiem is not unlike standing next to a hulking piece of brutalist architecture. The shadow it casts is long and makes you feel quite small and insignificant. However, Hebi Katana’s greatest strength can be found in variety; they’re a band unafraid to mix things up, not only are their individual songs full of time changes and shifting signatures, but the album is always crashing through the gears and subsequently no two songs inhabit the same sonic space and that makes it a record easy to digest in one sitting as things never become stagnant. Likewise, Hebi Katana make good use of light and shade; they’re not all pure bludgeon and while Blood Spirit Rising is bookended by two sections that push all the needles into the red there’s a lithe and airy mid section to provide contrast. In a similar fashion, Yu gen is akin to stepping into a hall of mirrors with sound fractured, reformed and reflected in every direction and the effect can be dizzying and disorientating (but in the best way possible).
Having released four studio albums inside five years (along with a hectic gig schedule), you might expect Hebi Katana to be showing signs of fatigue, yet they are a band who seem to thrive under pressure and their latest long player, Imperfection, proves itself the perfect album.
Tracklisting:
1. Bon Nou – 煩悩
2. Dead Horse Requiem -走馬灯
3. Praise the Shadows – 陰翳礼賛
4. Doomed Echoes from Old Tree – 木霊
5. Blood Spirit Rising – 諸行無常
6. Yu gen – 幽玄
7. Yume wa Kareno – 夢は枯野
Imperfection was released on 25 July through the California-based label Ripple Music. Courtesy of Purple Sage PR for providing the album for this review.
