Zen Lunatics are from Kyoto, Japan, and this one-sided 12” record brings ten songs of thrashy, hardcore punk. Immediately upon putting the needle on the record and seeing that they were from Japan, I had an expectation of what I thought this was going to sound like, but was I ever wrong! The first song—with its bluesy lead riff and mid-tempo start—threw me for a loop, but it didn’t take long for the songs to take a sound seemingly influenced by both the late ‘80s singalong or youth crew hardcore scene (without the lyrical content of ‘80s singalong or youth crew stuff) and early ‘90s thrashcore. Actually, I would have never guessed they were from Japan without having read it first. Ultimately, this is good and comforting, like visiting an old friend you haven’t heard from in ages or a good book that you’ve read a million times.
–Mark Twistworthy (Divis And Mason, zenlunatics.bandcamp.com)