When Birthplace released a single in 2004, a Tokyo record shop advertised it in a phrase: the Tokyo new school hardcore leader. That was the band’s standing at the time, and it has not been forgotten.
The Band
Birthplace is a five-piece from Tokyo. It belongs to the generation that came up in the late 1990s and carried the city’s new school hardcore scene through the 2000s. New school, in the Japanese sense, means hardcore with metal’s riffs and a strong melodic streak.
The bassist was Hiroyuki Kobayashi, known as Koba. He was playing in Loyal to the Grave at the same time, and later became that band’s singer. The guitarist is known as GV.
The Records
The catalogue is short and well spaced.
The first album, bless the birthplace which humanized us, came out in 2000 on the label OUT TA BOMB, on CD and on vinyl.
A four-song release, from no man’s land, followed in 2002, first as a seven-inch that January and then on CD in May. It was also on OUT TA BOMB, a label that released Endzweck in the same year.
Then there was a gap. The single that ended it, titled simply BIRTHPLACE, arrived on 30 October 2004 on Imperium Recordings. It was the band’s first release of its own in about three years, and had two songs: a new one, and a new recording of “RAIN OR SHINE” from the first album.
The second album, AMELIORATE, came out on 31 March 2005. The shops described it as classic new school at the base, with a melodic and metallic sound unlike anyone else’s.
The Afterlife
The first album went out of print. In August 2023 it was made available again, remastered overseas, on streaming services.
The same year, two of the band’s members, Koba and GV, appeared in a new group: Indication. That story is here.
Why It Matters
Birthplace did not make many records. What it had was the respect of its own city. The proof is that a first album from 2000 was thought worth remastering twenty-three years later.
Start with bless the birthplace which humanized us.
