It was 1990, and I was 19 years old. I came to see the studio session where a band called ASPHYXIA was playing. I was so impressed by their performance; ultra heavy and fast Grind music. The songs were all very complicated but groovy. The members were Yoichiro (Ds/Vo), Noboru (G) and Hideki (Ba). I was asked if I got interested in playing vocal in that band. To be honest I was not confident if I could follow their music as it was so complicated, but I decided to try. Then I joined the band ASPHYXIA.
The band soon changed the name to MULTIPLEX as we wanted to absorb variety of music elements mainly from Grind/ Death vein, but also from other genre such as Industrial, Noise and Junk music etc. At that time the influences the members mentioned were CARCASS, GODFLESH, FEAR FACTORY, TERRORIZER, John Zorn etc. My focus was more on Death/ Grind vein, but other members had really wider music tastes and reflected various elements into our music.
We began to play many local gigs and also recorded the first three-song demo in 1991. I liked the dirty sound of this demo! With these live performance and demo tape, an indie record label Selfish Records took interest in us. This label was well-known for lots of Japanese Hardcore releases such as those by S.O.B., LIP CREAM, GAUZE, DEATHSIDE etc. Then the label released a compilation CD ‘Thrashing Deathpower’ in 1991 featuring MULTIPLEX, GIBBED and SATANIC HELL SLAUGHTER (This CD was released in UK some time again with the name ‘Deathpower’). I think it was one of the first grind core CDs released from Japan except for those by S.O.B. These three bands were based in different cities in Japan, but we were all good friends, and played many gigs together.
We were also featured in a comp. CD called ‘Grinding Syndicate’ with GIBBED, ANARCHUS (Mexico) and CACOFONIA (Mexico) released by Samurai Records in Japan. I am still wearing the T-shirt with the cover design of this CD! Another EP ‘Uncanny Complex’ was released by Psycho Slaughter Records in USA but I’m not sure if this EP was really distributed as we ourselves received almost no copies.
Then Selfish Records decided to release our full-length album ‘World.’ The name of the album is very simple as we didn’t want it to easily sound usual Death/ Grind one, and wanted listeners to have wider images from it. The album was produced by Tottsuan (R.I.P.) of S.O.B. and we played gigs with S.O.B. in local clubs in Japan. We really liked to play gigs, indeed. By the way we experienced several member changes by the time we released the album and there was a time when we had three guitarists!
At that time there were many Death/ Grind bands in Japan. The long established HELLCHILD was very popular in the underground scene, and we often played a series of gigs called ‘Drowned Stage’ together (some members of MULTIPLEX and HELLCHILD later formed a pure grind band called FORCE). Sometimes people made the block-long line to see our gigs, but at the other time we played in front of 6 people. Anyway we were good friends with not only the bands I mentioned before, but also TRANSGRESSOR, ERODED, VOIDD, THE EQUINOX, TERROR FECTOR, MAGGOTY CORPSE, etc. and played a lot of gigs. It was really good time!
Along with playing gigs together, a Japanese label Toy’s Factory released a comp. CD ‘To the Marrow: Japanese Deathnology’ in 1993 featuring these bands. It must be very difficult to get this CD now, but it was a very nice sampler of the Japanese Death/ Grind scene at that time. In the same year MULTIPLEX and HELLCHILD were featured in a comp. CD ‘RAD’ released by BMG Victor which also featured G.I.S.M., DOOM, RUINS, TETSU-ARREY, COCOBAT etc.
I left the band in early 1994 for personal reason, but the band kept playing by around 1996, and I’m really happy to have the re-release of “World” album with the digitally re-mastered tracks! I hope you all enjoy it!
Takaaki Ohkuma (Summer 2012)
Xtreem Releases:
Band:
MULTIPLEX
Title:
World
CAT. #:
XM 117 CD
Format:
CD [79:48]
Genre:
Death/Grind
Released:
10.2012
Media:
If you run a zine, webzine or you need high quality graphic stuff about the band, you can download here a .ZIP file with: Pictures, Logos and Album cover.
