There is a Japanese spirit called Shirime with an eye where its anus should be. It scares people, behaves badly and, for a group of old friends in Rome looking for a band name, turned out to be useful for more than the obvious joke.
For Shirime, it also describes people going through the world refusing to properly look at what is happening around them.
“The perfect metaphor for how most people seem to look at the world today: indifferent, increasingly intolerant, completely stripped of empathy,” vocalist Luca says.
This idea runs through Shirime’s self-titled first EP, released on May 15, 2026. It is three songs and around seven minutes long: old-school hardcore, melody, groove, synths and Latin rhythms, with lyrics about class, work, fascism, social inequality and political violence.
Shirime are based in Rome and include members of Locked In and The Hardest Season. Luca previously sang for The Hardest Season, a band we covered regularly here at IDIOTEQ, and he got back in touch after starting this new project with other people from those two bands.
The connection is there, but Shirime are not trying to recreate anyone.
Luca says they naturally carried over the groove and willingness to move outside the usual hardcore boundaries that existed in The Hardest Season. From Locked In came a stronger melodic instinct and what he calls the pursuit of the perfect riff. His own writing has changed too. Looking back at his years with The Hardest Season, he sees more maturity in what he writes now.
“I hope that our background comes through at least a little in the debut EP, alongside the mix of references that shaped our search for a sound.”
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Angel Du$t, Spaced, Trapped Under Ice, Backtrack and Turnstile are useful reference points, but Shirime move between those influences quickly rather than settling into one approach. Shirime can go straight into a heavy hardcore section, then open the song through melody or change the rhythmic feel completely. The three tracks are short enough that those changes happen quickly.
The record was produced by Alex Gavazzi, known for his work with Jet Market, Thousand Oaks and Bedtime for Charlie, and recorded at Shatterdome Studio in Rome.
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“Butt-Eye” opens the EP and also explains most directly what Shirime are trying to do.
For Luca, it is the musical and lyrical manifesto of the band, as well as a product of their simple need to start playing again. The song begins dark and abrasive, then reaches a chorus that is much harder to put under a conventional hardcore label. The chorus is also one of the clearest signs that Shirime are not simply continuing what The Hardest Season or Locked In were doing.
The title brings us back to the yokai.
“See with no eyes
Lie and cry for your justice
Look at your life
Desperate times tons of bad apologies”
Later, the image becomes even more direct:
“Watch the world
With your butt-eye
Stand blindfolded
Till you feel the fire”
There is no complicated metaphor hiding behind it. “Butt-Eye” is about people choosing an easier, more selfish way of understanding the world. Look after yourself. Hate everyone else. Feel with no heart. Think with your guts because thinking properly takes more work.
“Plot Twist” moves the argument towards class and work.
Musically, Luca sees it as the point where the band’s old-school hardcore side and melodic instincts meet most clearly. It is direct, but the subject is closer to conversations the members have among themselves.
The song deals with becoming an adult after growing up with promises about wellbeing, careers and personal fulfilment that increasingly look empty. People are still taught to measure themselves through work and achievement, even as social mobility becomes harder to believe in.
“Forget about class fight my friend
It’s buried down the right to pretend
Anyone earns what they deserve
It’s a made up scheme and you’ll stay broke”
Luca describes the frustration behind it as something that touches their own friendships. They talk about it because sometimes talking is the only immediate way to make the pressure easier to carry.
His conclusion is simple: “If the social elevator is broken beyond repair, maybe we should tear the whole thing down instead of pretending it still works.”
The title rejects the comforting idea that everyone eventually gets the opportunity they were promised.
“The script has no plot twist.”
Then comes “Poison”, the longest song here at 3:06 and the one where Shirime move furthest outside standard hardcore writing. There are Latin rhythms, synths and considerably more melody. The lyrics, meanwhile, become more confrontational.
“Poison” answers the passivity attacked in “Butt-Eye”. It deals directly with new fascist movements, verbal and physical violence and politics designed around protecting wealth.
Luca rejects the idea that every act of violence can be discussed as though its context were identical.
“The violence of the oppressor is not the same as the violence of the oppressed. The first exists to repress and colonise, the second to resist.”
For him, there are situations in which telling people under attack to remain endlessly peaceful simply protects the people already holding power.
That is where the title comes from.
“Choosing to always be the antidote is no longer enough. Sometimes you have to choose the poison.”
The lyrics do not soften it:
“Hit, kick, beat and stomp on them
Til they’ll be sorry for what they done
Violence can be the answer if
The question is your right to exist”
Later the song reaches the line that Shirime have adopted as the political thread running through the EP:
“My sweetest dream, deepest desire
Is to starve the rich and set their money on fire”
STARVE THE RICH is not an extra slogan added around the release. It comes directly from “Poison“.
For Luca, the phrase sums up a much wider frustration with social inequality. He points to wealthy Western countries where the rich continue accumulating money while poverty reaches people who still have jobs, homes to maintain and families to support.
For Luca, this is also about people with jobs and families who still cannot reach the basic stability they were told work would provide.
The band’s politics do not stop at asking for a slightly fairer division of wealth.
“The utopia isn’t stopping at some idea of redistribution. It’s about inverting the whole system entirely.”
That position also affects where Shirime make their music available.
The EP is not on Spotify or Amazon Music. It can instead be streamed through other major platforms and downloaded from Bandcamp on a name-your-price basis, including for free.
The decision is intentional.
“In our daily lives we try to be mindful of our choices, as consumers, as people,” Luca says.
The band are not pretending there is some completely clean corporate alternative waiting elsewhere. Luca openly acknowledges that “at a certain scale there are no good guys”. Their point is simpler. When they know enough about a company’s practices to avoid contributing to it, they would rather do that.
He specifically objects to investment in military technology, including what he describes as genocidal drones, funded in part through money kept away from artists. His criticism of Amazon concerns its labour model and what he describes as reinventing slavery in the name of delivery.
They would rather keep whatever small amount of participation they control away from those systems.
Making the Bandcamp download free comes from a more practical and personal place.
“We want the music to reach as many people as possible, and being millennials, we’re attached to the idea of listening offline.”
Shirime are already thinking about what comes after these first seven minutes. They want to return to the studio, record more stuff and eventually make a physical release combining the debut EP with new songs.
There is also a local story underneath the record.
Luca thinks Rome is currently in a good period for punk and hardcore, especially compared with points when the city had far less activity. Some of the better-known names associated with Roman hardcore are absent. ToKill and Strength Approach have not played for years. Around them, though, a newer network of bands, promoters and collectives has kept things busy.
Rotten Inc. organise Questa รจ Roma Fest, which Luca considers an important event nationally as well as locally. Younger crews including Till Death and RM Skrmz keep adding shows across different punk, hardcore and related styles.
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What interests him most is the cooperation.
The city has people working together more consistently, even while spaces important to the culture face the opposite political pressure. Rome has become increasingly associated with evictions of historic social spaces, places that have long given punk and underground communities somewhere to organise, play and meet.
For Luca, that contradiction is a bigger part of the story than simply listing whatever bands happen to be active in 2026.
Still, there are several names he wants people outside Italy to check.
In Rome, Shortfuse stand out to him for their consistency. He also mentions Feldspar because their approach to hardcore shares some of Shirime’s interest in pushing past familiar genre limits.
Outside the city, his two Italian recommendations are Jaguero and Second Youth.
Shirime clearly carry parts of The Hardest Season and Locked In with them, especially the groove, melody and attention to riffs. The bigger change is in Luca’s writing, which now puts politics and class much closer to the centre of the band.
Most obviously, the words have moved much closer to the centre.
Across “Butt-Eye”, “Poison” and “Plot Twist”, the targets are connected: indifference, fascism, class inequality, the promise that hard work guarantees upward mobility, and the habit of treating systemic problems as personal failures.
Shirime use the time they have.
The self-titled EP is out now and available as a free download through Bandcamp. It is streaming through selected services, excluding Spotify and Amazon Music. The band intend to return to Shatterdome Studio for more songs, with a physical release bringing together this first EP and new recordings already part of the plan.
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