Stupid karate… They’re stupid, and I suspect they don’t actually know Karate, but they’re pretty damn good nonetheless. Back with a new EP entitled ‘Punk is a free pricing corpse’, these French mentalists don’t fuck about with anything approaching subtlety. Instead they charge in, slam you round the face with big greasy riffs and then fuck off again before you’ve had a chance to work out which part of you has been violated. Wait, why do I like this again?
Kicking off with ‘the devil rides out’, a one-minute (just), blast of feral noise that recalls the ferocious onslaught of Trash Talk, Stupid Karate don’t so much violate the listener as leave them bloodied upon the floor with all the hall marks of a mass beating having occurred. Turn up the volume and it’s like a riot’s broken out in your living room. Leave it turned up and the frantically stupid ‘embrace my O-Goshi’ appears to take its cue from NOFX with its gang chant vocals and gloriously distorted bass lines. It says much of the band’s skills that a brilliantly executed cover of ‘pet sematary’ (the Ramones) is possibly the weakest (albeit by a fraction) moment on the EP. Happily, we then get ‘stand out of my sunlight’ as the EP closer. A positive epic at three minutes in length, ‘SOOMS’ is tough, streetwise punk with a gritty lo-fi edge that stands in glorious opposition to the ghastly, super-polished pop that masqueraded as punk throughout much of the early 00’s.
Stupid Karate, I salute you. Another dizzying, sub-eight-minute EP and another example of exactly how punk, with its don’t-give-a-flying-fuck attitude should sound. Buy this EP. Or steal it. Somehow, I get the feeling the band would respect you more for the latter. 9
