Reviews:

From Gothtronic: (by Remco)

  Don’t be mislead by the blossoms on the cover of this pretty re-issue on Cold Spring. We are dealing here with Japanese noise hero KK Null and his famous noise rock outfit Zeni Geva who can be lined up with extraordinary noisy acts such as Swans, Godflesh and Lewd making slow crawling unrelenting guitar noise tearing your eardrums with harsh penetrating scorching riffage.

  Maximum Money Monster dates back from 1990 and was originally released by cult label Pathological with acts such as Oxbow and underestimated Terminal Cheesecake. This is an album full of massive monolithic rotating burning riffs and skin peeling noise by an abrasive noise monster, a pounding Japanese noise rock barrage which is most impressive when grinding monotonously slow riffs booting your face.

   Maximum Money Monster is designed to play loud and you will get hypnotized by the scorching oppressive repetitive riff that goes on for about twelve minutes while KK Null is screaming his guts out in “Slam King” a promising opener which is relentlessly rotating on a slow pounding riff. “Slam King” takes you were only Swans did reach during their Cop period. “Blaze” starts with a tiny riff sounding a bit like Pitchblende. This is a short fast song going seamless into “Blackout” with fast burning dissonant riffs and a lot of power. “Sweetheart” starts with a typical rock intro before going into a slow sludge riff dragging through the dirt, the words sweetheart never sounded this sinister before while a granulizing solo filling empty spaces and the riff continuously drags on. “Guystick Body” is a muscular track with not a very strong riff but has some good bouncing noise instead making this into a nice track. Tattering string attack strikes again in “Skullfuck” which riff make me think of Dutch noise act Lewd who has released some on KK Null’s label Nux Organization as well a split EP with Zeni Geva. Real dirt starts dragging in “War Pig” with a threatening riff slow rolling like monster through the desert while the tremolo is handed well making the strings scream in fear of death. “On Suicide” starts strange with some words by Berthold Brecht but than it changes into typical Zeni Geva violent monster riffage.

  These recordings have a good sound with a live feel in it as it is a live recording which make this album very direct and confronting. However the slower grinding tracks are the real highlights, the faster ones are not bad either and give Maximum Money Monster the variation it needs and does result into a fine release for those exploring the roots of temporary drone rock or just like tattering pounding riff assaults. (Classic Of The Month, June 2008)

From Rock-A-Rolla: (by Kevin McCaighy)

  The acclaim meted out to KK Null's more recent diversions into experimental electronics has tended to obscure the group in which he made his name. The bruising rock trio Zeni Geva has been wreaking havoc across a span of two decades now, emerging from the late 80s experimental diaspora into one of the most vicious of all Japanese Noise bands. Their debut album was first released in 1990 on the cult Pathological label, also home to the woefully under-celebrated Terminal Cheesecake. It is a world class display of sonic brutality, beginning with the scarcely endurable oppression of 'Slam King', a quarter hour of lumbering, monochord pressure. The squalid squealing guitars of Null and Tabata are chilling in their effectiveness; their clean forensic attack only exacerbates the growing anxiety of Null's withering vocal screams. The poisonous, rock damage of 'Guystick Bodie' and 'Skull Fuck' leave mangled acres of scorched debris in their wake, their gleeful monotony beating the listener to a lifeless pulp. This superb reissue also features three unnervingly raw live tracks as bonus tracks.

From Chain D.L.K.: (by Maurizio Pustianaz)

  After years of unavailability, eighteen years since its original release on Pathological Records, here's surfacing MAXIMUM MONEY MONSTER by Zeni Geva. Merging free jazz, hardcore and repressed rage the Japanese trio open the album with a punch in the audience's face thanks to the sixteen minutes of "Slam king", a track based on a couple of chords that is able to hypnotize and devastate at the same time. "Blaze" and "Black out", instead, in less than two minutes are able to pick you up and make you do a roller coaster ride through hard rock psychedelia ("Blaze") and obsessive industrial core ("Black out"). Musically, is like listening to an extreme version of Black Flag on acid and by the way guitars are treated you can understand the reason why K.K. Null collaborated with Merzbow later. I saw Zeni Geva live twice at the times of "Desire for agony" and I assure you that their nihilism was throbbing and alive, on and off stage (the guitar player that time was so angry for some reason that he beat his head against a wall of the bathroom). Thanks to this new Cold Spring reissue you can check their live sound on the three bonus tracks: "War pig" and "Skullfuck" (coming from this album) plus "Dead car, sun crash".

From Terrorizer: (by WS)

  A group as legendary as Japanese quasi-supergroup Zeni Geva should never be forgotten, which is presumably why debut album 'Maximum Money Monster' has been re-released by concept patrons Cold Spring. Could anyone seriously have the audacity to say a negative word about the great 'MMM'? The first few seconds of epic 'Slam King' should confirm that as no, and when three unreleased live tracks are on the cards those uninitiated would be mad not to grab the opportunity of hearing this iconic listening experience. (9/10)

From Compulsion: (by Tony Dickie)

  I've no idea what Zeni Geva sound like today since their reappearance in 2000 but way back in the late eighties, early nineties Zeni Geva were responsible for a series of seminal releases of guitar noise including Nai-Hai, Total Castration and, this one, Maximum Money Monster. Zeni Geva were one helluva beast with a ravaging noise-rock sound that sucked in so many influences and spat out a sound that was at turns crushing and punishing. There was little middle ground. Just listen to Maximum Money Monster and you can pick up on bits of hardcore, punk, industrial and a degree of ferocious guitar improvisation. Zeni Geva straddled so many genres but, like so many Japanese groups, they ultimately failed to fit any, which was one of their main strengths.

  Maximum Money Monster was originally released on Kevin Martin's supreme Pathological label (which in itself was an expanded reissue of Zeni Geva's Maximum Love and Fuck 4 track LP originally issued on Japan's NUX Organisation). It's fair to say Maximum Money Monster seems to feed off the early pummelling Swans releases, a sound latterly picked up by Godflesh. Right from the monstrous roar and grinding guitars that comprise the 15 minute barrage of 'Slam King' y'know this is something extremely heavy. 'Blackout' launches into full throttle head noise, lapsing into metal riffage with accelerated time changes. Yet the metal riffage here is stripped of excess, swollen with powerhouse percussion and Null's guitar histrionics that throw up noise-screech throughout. The vocal barrage is reduced to repeated refrains, usually just the title - 'Sweetheart', 'Skullfuck' - spat out in short bursts of shouts and groans. With Zeni Geva everything seemed reduced to gain maximum effect and physical impact. And despite the sheer heaviness of it all, there's no bass guitar on Maximum Money Monster. The frenetic lumbering of, say, 'Skullfuck', with its grinding guitars and apparent low-end is all achieved with the twin guitar prowess of Null and Tabata. The only concession to melody appears in Yoshida's maudlin vocal on 'On Suicide' which snags lyrics from Brecht, against a pared down and taut backbone of rhythm and guitar, which slopes off into voice and guitar acrobatics.

  To the casual observer Maximum Money Monster may seem like a deviation from the usual Cold Spring fare. It all starts to make sense when you consider that all the members of Zeni Geva had links to Japan's burgeoning noise scene. Ikuo Taketani was drummer for Hanatarash, Tatsuya Yoshida pounded the skins for Ruins, Tabata was an ex-member of the Boredoms and featured in Marble Sheep who released Shinjuku Loft on Cold Spring (itself recently reissued on Dirter) and Null, a mainstay of the Japanese noise scene, who has collaborated with Merzbow and countless others.

  This Cold Spring reissue features an additional three tracks recorded live in Tokyo in 1990. Even after all these years Maximum Money Monster still burns with a ferocious intensity. It's no wonder that Steve Albini got involved with them following this release. Great stuff.

From Head Heritage: (by Julian Cope)

  Finally, I wanna conclude this reviews section with some praise for the re-issued MAXIMUM MONEY MONSTER, the 1990 debut by Japan's power trio Zeni Geva, now superbly re-issued by Northampton's wonderful Cold Spring record label. First released on the now defunct Pathological label, this monolithic slab of post No Wave ploughed that same Uber-cunted furrow as Von LMO at his most savage and uncompromising. Indeed, the album's incredible opening 16-minuter 'Slam King' could've been the ultimate meditation if it was anywhere near as long as Von's 'X+Y=0'. Still, this opening track so bombards listeners with its granite hewn riffarama and singer KK Null's nuts-in-a-vice vocal delivery that the rest of the album seems fairly acceptable in comparison. In truth, however, this is one horribly more-ish Nihonese motherfucker whose grooves sustain from beginning to end. Score
this beautifully (re-)packaged son-of-a-bitch from www.coldspring.co.uk, and cop three bonus live tracks to boot!

From Zero Tolerance: (by Jason De L'Orme)

  In this infuriatingly prolonged drought of anything even remotely disturbing or exhilirating evolving within the metal zeitgeist, it is of great import that the UK's Cold Spring have re-released Zeni Geva's long-unavailable Maximum Money Monster. Imagine, if you will, a revisionist's take of Edgar Allen Poe's The Pit And The Pendulum, where his leviathan, pendulous guillotine has been fiendishly replaced with a 500-tonne, grime-infested wrecking ball of monstroid riffs, careening murderously towards your brain pan with, quite frankly, little concern for the inevitable and considerably catastrophic sanguinary damage that will ensue. And if that wasn't enough to enfeeble your quaking aortas, then guitar heathen KK Null's predatory, strep-throated, gargoylian bray will breach even the most resolute of colons. Within the glacial dominion of truly demented guitar misanthropy, Japan's Zeni Geva are without peer when it comes to generating spare, grievous, metronomic head-fuckery, generating vast, compulsive, almost primordial torrents of uncompromising aggression - and you are about as likely to survive ten rounds in a 'psycho-rules-only' cage fight with Snake Plissken that come through their 15-minute magnum ode to goad, 'Slam King', unmolested. With its malevolent credo of spare, visceral guitar passages and relentless, pagan-mechanik percussion, 'Slam King' is an enthralling master class in the bruising efficacy of avant-metal minimalism. Therein lies the grand paradox within Zeni Geva's mesmerising, robotic coda: how can music so rigid, structured, almost algebraic in its precision sound so palpably human and organic at the same time? Withing the hyperbolic world of the metal press, it is sadly quite rare to find an album that actually merits much grandiloquent prose, and Maximum Money Monster is a most worthy beast, one that will kick you repeatedly in the steaming uglies. And once Zeni Geva have rinsed your skull into a bloody spittoon with nary a pause for a fatuous one-liner, they will hunt down your nearest and dearest, your pinkest and cuddliest, and render them into little more thatn bilious, fat-faced mortuary effluent. (5/5)

From Judas Kiss: (by Lee Powell)

  Nicely camouflaged behind the tranquil, organic, white sleeve with its stark branch artwork is a behemoth of a beast, and perhaps one of the more unusual releases to have come from the Cold Spring camp in quite some time. Normally more known for its highly revered ventures into all things post-industrial, from martial to dark ambient, neo-folk to power electronics, you have a rough idea what you can expect from Cold Spring, and that it’s going to fit pretty comfortably into what you’d normally expect from such a prolific and influential label. Then along comes ‘Maximum Money Monster’, a huge, powerful, psychedelic, Japanese, avant-rock beast by Zeni Geva, and it throws everything off-kilter. OK, I know you should never become complacent with a label like Cold Spring, as they have over the years forged way ahead with innovative post-industrial music, but a release like this comes almost as a complete surprise.

  Yes, it’s noisy and has a hugely powerful and engulfing sound, but not in the way you’d expect. Using only vocals, guitars, effects and tons of fucking percussion, Zeni Geva make a tremendous racket, which has similarities to the likes of early Swans and the noisier experimental freakouts of the Butthole Surfers. The music and sound it produces is gigantic. It thunders out of the speakers like a tidal wave, engulfing and crushing everything in its path with its rough, forceful abrasive ferocity.

  Recorded in the late 80s, ‘Maximum Money Monster’ has a sound that is as fresh and ferocious as many of its modern-day contemporaries, and feels as if it could have been recorded yesterday. However, unlike the Swans and Butthole Surfers, whose music was, although very left-field and experimental, widely available. ‘MMM’ hasn’t been until now, and that’s a real shame, as it captures the avant-garde leanings of experimental rock and guitar noise that the late 80s threw up perfectly.

  Although in a sense a retrospective release, it has a place in contemporary avant-rock, as it shows how bands of this nature helped shape the hugely popular sounds of post-rock/post-metal music that is flooding the market at the minute. Bands like Pelican, Red Sparows and even perhaps Japanese post-rock legends Mono and doom merchants Sunn O))) all show glimpse of this genre of music in their crushing compositions, although whether or not a band as obscure as Zeni Geva was at the time would be freely cited as an influence is debatable. This aside, as it’s all but irrelevant now anyway, ‘MMM’ is an intense, muscular workout of experimental Japanese rock and is as punishing, powerful and intense as its contemporises in today’s extreme musical genres, even if it comes at things from a completely different angle.

  Originally released in 1990, and featuring three additional live tracks from the same period, ’MMM’ delivers a welcome excursion into poundingly heavy music that would have never been heard in years were it not for those lovely people at Cold Spring, who have thankfully made this available to a wider audience, which will hopefully appreciate the dense racket that ‘MMM’ contains.

From Aquarius:

  Swans. Godflesh. Big Black. Melvins. Eyehategod. Unsane. Zeni Geva. We're concerned here with the latter, who maybe aren't as well known as the first half dozen bands mentioned, but sure as heck belong in that illustrious company... and sound VERY much like some unholy, heavier-than-thou hybrid of all of 'em!! It's been a long time since we've had a new Zeni Geva album to write about... and no this isn't actually a new album. But we're still pretty excited. Every once in a while, we have the opportunity to list and review an old favorite. Something that's been out of print for longer even than we've been doing the Aquarius website and New Arrivals emails, that we'd never had the chance to stock and recommend before, that finally at long last gets a well-deserved reissue and is cause for much celebration 'round here. For instance, to name a couple of recent examples, Harvey Milk's My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be. And Skullflower's IIIrd Gatekeeper. You'll note the examples we just cited are all on the "heavy" side... well that's 'cause what we're about to recommend here also pretty darn heavy. To say the least.

  You may already be familiar with Japan's Zeni Geva, as they've been around for years and years. This cult "progressive hardcore" trio is the brainchild of guitarist Kazuyuki Kishino Null, also well-known for his "nullsonic" solo recordings. Definitely influenced by early Swans, KK Null started up the doomy and noisy ZG in about 1987. Previously he'd done time in Tokyo underground industrial noise-terrorists Absolut Null Punkt, and with prog act YBO2, which also featured drummer Tatsuya Yoshida, who of course later went on to lead the incredible Magmoid duo Ruins. Meanwhile, post-YBO2, Null formed the far more metallic* Zeni Geva. Null did draft Yoshida in to play drums on some early ZG material (wouldn't you?), and you'll here him here on about half of this disc's tracks, contributing his distinctive vocals as well to a couple songs. Ikuro Taketani (ex-Hanatarashi) plays drums on the other half. The lineup also includes Tabata Mitsuru (ex-Boredoms and Leningrad Blues Machine) on guitar. That's right, there's no bassist in Zeni Geva which is pretty incredible considering how hellishly heavy they are! And it's clear that ZG are something of a underground Japanese rock supergroup.

  MMM was ZG's first cd release, coming out originally in 1990 on the UK's now long-gone Pathological label. It's a lumbering juggernaut fully blessed and bloated with everything we LOVE about Zeni Geva that would also be heard on later, Albini-produced releases like Total Castration and Desire For Agony: Utter headbanging, slo-mo, dirt-plowing destruction. Molasses thick riffs dripping from electric axes. Frenzied, technical bashing. Mathy post rock song structures. High-end guitar solo skree. Mean misanthropic attitude. Pounding repetition. Pounding repetition. Pounding repetition.... adorned with the aforementioned guitar soloing, providing a crashing, crushing soundscape to underscore the throaty proclamations of "Sweetheart!" or "War Pig!" or "Blackout!" from gruff vocalist/guitarist Null -- the lyrics to these tracks being little more than the song title shouted over and over with fervent anguish. Glorious stuff, massive and mesmeric.

  From the first track, the 16 minute harrowing dirge-stomp "Slam King" that ends terrifyingly with waves of unaccompanied, effected vocals, to the last, the rhythmic and witchy "On Suicide", featuring lyrics borrowed from Bertold Brecht, this is scary, monolithic, artistic heaviness of the highest order.
Let's give a big thanks to Cold Spring for making this classic available once again (as part of a wave of Japanese releases including a new disc from noise legends CCCC). Though we don't see why Cold Spring felt the need to replace the original, much more colorful, and in our opinion, superior artwork, we are happy to note that they did make one major improvement. While the eight songs on the original disc were inexplicably presented as one loooong track with no separate-song indexing (annoying!) they're thankfully corrected that. Now you can skip right to "Guystick Bodie", or put "Skullfuck" on repeat. And in addition to the eight original tracks, they've added three previously unreleased bonus cuts as well! Devastating live versions of album cuts "War Pig" (a Zeni Geva song, not Sabbath's "War Pigs" plural) and "Skullfuck", along with "Dead Car, Sun Crash" (an early ZG number not included on the album proper), recorded in Tokyo circa 1988-89. Whee! Like we said, we're so stoked to get to list/review/recommend this!

  *Though not metallic enough to be accepted by the online metal authority Encyclopedia Metallum it must be noted...

From Brainwashed: (by Simon Marshall-Jones)

  The music of Zeni Geva has variously been described as heavy metal, noise rock, math rock (apparently because of their use of atypical time signatures), death metal, thrash metal, sludge metal, doom metal and industrial metal; in truth it is all of these categories while at the same time travelling far beyond the trite parameters and restrictions usually associated with them. Maximum Money Monster originally debuted in 1990 and here includes three extra live tracks as bonus material.

   Zeni Geva's music is above all an intensely intelligent redefinition of 'rock' boundaries and firmly pushes those very same boundaries into new post-rock territories. Admittedly the music does share many of the characteristics and stylings indigenous to the genres mentioned above (such as gruffly shouted vocals, overdriven guitar, pounding drums and screaming solos) but in this case it amounts to sheer intellectual laziness to lump them in with the often moribund and immature aesthetics of such music as well as exhibiting a distinct lack of imagination; there are indeed elements of metal in all its guises in there and no doubt they would be the first to acknowledge the debt owed. ZG are more knowing than that though; using these aspects in combination with the aesthetics, sensibilities and rawness of both punk rock and Japanoise the music becomes catalysed into something that is at once all these things and something new, changed beyond the original conception.

  There is no denying that ZG constitute a behemoth of a musical outfit both in terms of sound and sheer vital energy. Null's overdriven guitar and powerful voice, supported by the backbone of the relentlessly driving and pounding drums, form the essential blueprint of Zeni Geva's vision. It could so easily have been something of a Frankensteinian chimera, but this creature is expertly and deftly handled by all participants, tightly controlled yet simultaneously allowed full freedom of expression. The various facets and influences show through individually while playing their co-operative part in the whole; the musicians show a flair for combining everything without letting it become an indistinguishable (and undistinguished) mess.

  I would venture to say that Japan is better known for artists and outfits espousing a more extreme vision—bands like Zeni Geva help to redress the balance with their marrying of familiar rock structures with a fiercely independent intelligence, and an intelligence not willing to yield to stasis. The vast majority of music, even that considered to be underground, exists within a comfort zone which it is often reluctant to step outside of. Not only do ZG step outside their own comfort zone, but they do so fearlessly and with both eyes very much firmly open.