When the question came up about how emoviolence, blackened hardcore, and post-metal cross over on House of The Blood Choir’s debut full-length, vocalist Hazuki Chigusa didn’t try to defend any of the labels.
“Does it look like a conceptual, carefully thought-out album? We just happened to end up with 13 cool songs, so we made it into an album. I hope that’s not disappointing lol. Maybe someday we’ll be able to do something like that,” she said.
“By innocently chasing the music we love, we ended up with an album that crosses over various genres. We might not even be a Skramz band anymore, but we’re not entirely Hardcore either, and it feels too dark to call it Emo. Actually, I’m not even sure what skramz really is. It’s difficult for me to explain this music โ but I think that’s okay.”
If you stream the most popular track from “Mom’s Anxiety” first, skramz isn’t necessarily the word that comes to mind. The album, out June 30 on Gerpfast Records as a 100-copy cassette, is an amalgam: a 90s alternative drift with grunge tucked into the corners, post-hardcore weight, and stretches of full-speed skramz and emoviolence once they kick in. The blackened hardcore and post-metal tags on the press sheet aren’t decoration either. None of those labels alone covers the whole record, which is partly the point.
The Osaka five-piece is Hazuki Chigusa on vocals, Jyota Hashiguchi and Keitaro Fujita on guitars, Garoo Kyoshiro on bass, and Hiroto Hayashi on drums. Hazuki writes all the lyrics and hesitated about making them public.
“As for the lyrics, I hesitated about whether to make them public because they are extremely personal and introspective. I feel like the expressions are quite direct, so I don’t want to explain the content any further, but if I had to sum it up in one phrase, it would be ‘obsession’ and ‘contradiction.’ I keep going back and forth between anger and lament toward many things, including myself. Musically too, I scream and then suddenly sing โ my emotional instability is probably reflected quite well lol. I released the lyrics as a kind of gift to listeners, so rather than trying to investigate me, I think the correct way to engage with them is for listeners to make the lyrics their own.”
The record was tracked at LM Studio with Akira Inada engineering, mixing, and mastering. LM is the studio Ippei Suda built โ the same room that captured Corrupted and a long list of other essential Osaka work. Hazuki described it as one of the most important studios in the city’s underground. Akira, who handled the session, also plays guitar in the world-touring Palm.
“For the sound, I wanted something a bit different from the hi-fi sound that’s common in modern hardcore โ but I didn’t want it to be completely raw either, because we’re still a youth,” Hazuki said.
“I made a lot of abstract requests, but he responded to all of them with outstanding work. The drum sound is very close to our ideal, and especially the Drop Cโtuned guitar sounds better than it does in real life lol. There are also some parts where the vocals are recorded with distance from the microphone, and I think that created an interesting effect โ it sounds kind of pitiful in a way, which I like lol.” Akira also remastered the recordings for the cassette edition.
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Track seven, titled “No matter what you say, I’m here, don’t leave me alone,” is the only song on the album not credited to the full band โ Jyota wrote it alone. The story behind it is stranger than that single fact suggests.
“This track is actually a demo of M6 ‘I Am Maria’ that Jyota recorded on his phone. I really liked this demo, so we used it as-is on the album. It’s a song that was made relatively early after the band formed, and I think it captures the atmosphere of that time. As for the title, I named it with the image of it being like an alternate story to ‘I Am Maria.'”
About the local context, Hazuki was direct: there isn’t really a “scene” in the way the word usually gets thrown around for Japanese skramz. “I don’t think there are enough skramz bands in Osaka to really call it a ‘scene,’ but cofun is one of the few that exist. We often play together with cofun, and recently we even did a two-man show. Other bands we frequently share bills with are Termination in Osaka, and in Tokyo, Negative Sun and Serotonin Mist. Their music is great, and they are both good friends and very understanding people.”
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She and Jyota both work at Namba Bears, the long-running Osaka venue managed by Seiichi Yamamoto, and the band plays there often. “It’s my favorite venue in the world. The manager is Seiichi Yamamoto, and I originally looked up to this place a lot. All the staff are crazy too.” On the older Japanese names that get cited on every Japanese skramz feature, she was equally clear: “We’ve never directly been involved with Envy, Heaven in Her Arms, or Killie, but we’ve definitely been influenced by their songs to some extent. They’re simply too legendary.”
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The Gerpfast connection runs deeper than this one record. Label owner Aditya Pandu Wijaya โ Pandu โ has been releasing Osaka artists for years.
“House Of The Blood Choir is not the first Osaka-based band released by Gerpfast Records. Previously, I have worked with artists such as Mophing People, Cosame Chan, Kung-fu Girl, and Jocko, etc, and also released the first demo by House Of The Blood Choir,” Pandu said.
“This connection started from a personal interest in exploring underground and underrated artists in Japan. From there, it naturally expanded beyond Osaka and Tokyo to other areas, including Nagoya, Okinawa, Kobe, and Kyoto. Also, I am not focused on a single genre, I like to explore a wide range of styles. This approach is reflected in the diverse catalog that Gerpfast Records continues to build.”
For Hazuki, Gerpfast holds an unusual position in the Japanese underground โ an Indonesian label with deep working knowledge of the country’s bands. “I think Gerpfast is a rare presence in that they’re very knowledgeable about Japanese bands, especially in the underground scene. Many of our friends (Negative Sun, Cissnรฉ, moreru, etc.) have also released through Gerpfast. When we had just formed and made our first demo, we were surprised to be contacted by Pandu from Gerpfast. Honestly, I’d like to ask him why he was even checking us out.”
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Going the other direction, she’s been paying close attention to Southeast Asia. “I’m not very familiar with the connections between Indonesia and Japan, but there are so many amazing bands in the Southeast Asian hardcore scene, and I’m very interested in it. Last year at NEW REALM FEST in Tokyo, the performances by Doldrey (Singapore) and Hong! (Indonesia) were incredibly impressive โ really cool.
I also saw Sial (Singapore) at Bears and fell in love with them. We’d love to tour Southeast Asia someday.”
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The cassette pressing โ 100 copies โ was Pandu’s call. Hazuki’s read on it was short: cassettes are an important item for skramz fans, and that’s enough.
Lyrics by Hazuki Chigusa, all songs written by the full band except track seven by Jyota Hashiguchi. Sleeve design by Keigo Kurematsu, photography by Hiroko Takemoto.
“Mom’s Anxiety” is streaming in full now via House of The Blood Choir’s Bandcamp. Cassette pre-orders are open through Gerpfast Records, shipping on or around June 30, 2026.
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