On the subject of Haino's supposed racism, you would be surprised to find out just how many people outside of the USA feel that their culture has been invaded by the USA - just ask a random selection of (French) people in the streets of Paris, and you'll get opinions like this from more than 50% of them. You just cannot underestimate the amount of cultural imperialism that the USA have imposed on the world ever since they won WW-II for us. Haino's remarks must certainly be seen in the proper context. As far as I can tell, he is a strong advocate of tradition; he was one of the people who fiercely protested when the government forced farmers to give up their land in order to build Narita airport in the late 60s. His lyrics are not even in contemporary Japanese. He must feel that a culture which he loves is disappearing, and that what replaces is is often not very worthwhile. Furthermore, it is definitely true to some extent that the Japanese have changed even physically from these cultural influences. It is well-known that there is a steep increase in intestinal diseases since the Japanse have started to eat McDonald's and other fast food, their digestive systems having been accustomed largely to a diet of seafruits and vegetables. And it could very well be that the average height has changed - the same has happened in The Netherlands, where people have become progressively and noticeably larger with each generation. To find these remarks racist in any sense is, to me, only possible in a country that has become so "politically correct" that it has elected for president what must be the biggest moron ever to have occupied such a high office. You can go on living in Fortress America and think that everyone else in the world is a terrorist (as George Bush thinks, but his remarks about this are carefully filtered out the news reports in the US, as when he recently asked the Brazilian president if they "also had blacks in Brazil?").

Maybe I'm a wuss, but I've avoided Skrewdriver records for political reasons, and I find it hard to believe that anyone finds the church-burning shenanigans of some of the Scandinavian death-metal yobs cute.

I don't think burning churches is cute, but I do think that Burzum has released a couple of very good records, which I have and like to listen to. Frankco