By the time that the Japanese hardcore punk band Disclose released their debut album Tragedy in 1994, the world was already thoroughly infested with hordes of unimaginative Discharge clones who were content to merely rip off the visual and musical aesthetic of the iconic UK hardcore band, puking up gobs of boring, two-chord xeroxed speed-punk and mindless anti-authoritarian bellowing. And if you were to just go by the look of the cover for Tragedy, you might think that this record was just going to offer more of the same. But when Disclose detonate the static-drenched white-noise thrash of opener "Dying Of Disease", it was clear that we were hearing something different. Underneath all of the hiss and noise and chaos, that classic Discharge sound was there, but these guys were mutating it into something much more abrasive and bizarre.

The fifteen songs that race across Tragedy all bear the hallmarks of the signature D-beat sound: that galloping drumbeat, the simple two-chord riffs and sickening, nasally one-note guitar solos, bone-rattling bass, the burly, infuriated vocals spitting out haiku-like tirades against modern warfare and the nightmare reverberations of nuclear holocaust, all splayed over two-minute long thrash songs. But Disclose buried that violent hardcore assault underneath a thick layer of suffocating static hiss, and twisted aspects of that sound into interesting, aggressive new forms, transforming this into a far more caustic take on crusty hardcore. The guitars themselves become so blown out on some of these songs that they sound more like a massively distorted synthesizer than a guitar, a searing electrified buzz that slashes wildly through the band's rampaging D-beat noise assault. And that blasting static gets so intense as the album progresses that by the time you get to the crashing violent thrash of closer "The End Of Blood", it sounds as if Disclose is being swallowed up in a roiling fog of distorted hiss. Their low-fi recording quality and blown-out noisiness was certainly similar to Japanese hardcore pioneers Confuse, but Disclose delivered an even more cacophonous and brutal sound on Tragedy, eventually becoming highly influential on the later proponents of the noise-punk aesthetic.

This noise-punk classic has been reissued on 180 gram vinyl in a casewrapped jacket, and features the original, superior mix that appeared on the initial 1994 pressing on Overthrow Records.