Personally I never owned a single record of theirs and I’ve never been particularly fond of them. I always preferred El Mariachi who play roughly the same style. So I can’t say too much about the band’s development…

Kobayashi play hc/punk with german lyrics. The vocals are mostly exclaimed and the guitars’ distortion is heavy. The drums are driving and the bass is a little shapeless. They are mostly quite fast and sometimes there is even a little d-beat feel in the drums or lead guitars. All in all they seem like the contemporary personification of traditional ajz hardcore.

The lyrics are politically conscious but thankfully rather metaphorical than erected index finger. I really like that all lyrics are printed in german, English and Spanish in the booklet (another thing they share with El Mariachi, I recall). “la valla” is written in Spanish and deals with the European border regime that keeps killing refugees in northern Africa and elsewhere. “henna” is a fine anti-hippie-song. Not exactly my cup of tea but a the willing listener will for sure be satisfied.  [jan]

www.kobayashi-disko.org