Karate Is In The Ocean

There was a period in the early 2000's when my new dial up internet connection collided with my intense desire to find new music. I was hungry for something new and tools like Napster, WinMx and Soulseek gave me access to download full albums of bands that I was curious to check out. I was grabbing anything that I had the slightest interest in... nu metal, hip hop, rock and indie bands. It was kind of overwhelming as I was downloading multiple albums a day and ripping them to CD so that I could listen in the car and at work, and there was realistically no way that I was able to give any of it the time an attention it probably deserved. A few bands made a decent impact on me and stuck around, but for the most part there was a lot of stuff that just became a blur of background noise. During this time period, I downloaded a few albums from Modest Mouse and Karate... and at the time, none of them made much of an impression and those burned CDs that I'd made for them hit the trash and I forgot all about those bands. Earlier this year, a friend had me check out a Modest Mouse song and much to my surprise I found that I really liked the band and I could not get enough of them... and then in the midst of my Modest Mouse obsession, Ralf over at It All Comes Down To This put Karate back onto my radar.

I hadn't thought about Karate for probably 20 years. I really liked the Cherry Coke song that they had on the split with The Crownhate Ruin, but I remembered everything else that I'd checked out as being rather dull. With my new found appreciation for Modest Mouse, and inspired by Ralf's post, I figured that maybe I should check out Karate with older ears and an open mind. I went to Spotify and pulled up the album that Ralf had posted about, The Bed Is In The Ocean, and started listening. The first couple of songs had my attention, but once we started making our way through Diazapam, I found that I was really enjoying it. The more that I listened to these songs, the more I loved them. The songs are so laidback, but for some reason when I listen to this album I have to turn the volume way up. It's like there is a hidden power rumbling through the songs, and they just demand to be played loud. Honestly, I'm fucking floored by how much I love this record. I don't even know if I dare check out other Karate albums because this one is so perfect.

I could have picked up an original 1998 black vinyl pressing for a decent price, but that tri-colored reissue from 2022 looked too good to resist... and for only $18 on Discogs, the price was right as well.