GutterPutter

Melt-Banana is a Japanese experimental noise rock band stationed in Tokyo, consisting of vocalist Yasuko”Yako” Onuki and guitarist Ichiro Agata. Since 1991, the band had gone through nine records at the time of writing and a varying series of touring drummers since 2000 (their bassist Rika Hamamoto left the band in 2013). If one is going to sum their style up outside of their genre, then the closest there is to a selling point would be Yuko’s high-pitched singing, an energy that competes with hardcore punk bands, and an intense use of pedal effects for the guitar.

3 + 5 is the latest album from the duo, following up from 2013’s Fetch which marked an 11-year gap. To try and further contextualise the band, it is worth noting that Yuko prefers to sing in English after spending the first few albums in Japanese. She would try to make up her inexperience with the language by using the dictionary to find whatever word she finds interesting to use. Agata’s musical influence stems from his hobby in playing video games which adds a more electronic dimension to the music which comes with a helpful use of drum machine to fill in for percussion. As said in an interview on Decibel Magazine, they rely on the computer to stand in for session musicians. 

If you are a fan of the band for a long time, I encourage you to not read on from here. If you have never heard of the band before and you want to know if this is a good start to check them out, then let me clue you in on this album. It’s all just noise. Tasteless, structureless, purposeless noise that bears little value to the attempt at boundary pushing compared to an artist like Merzbow. When you throw in Yuko’s singing, it feels like you are listening to a snuff podcast where a cat is slowly dying from breathing in horrible, horrible toxins. It doesn’t matter what tracks I could name from because at the end of the day, the entire album, clocking in at just around 25 minutes, feels like the soundtrack from the deepest ring of Hell.

If I do need to name some bits, then there do exist some forms of technical competency. ‘Puzzle’ sees the electronic notes twinkle to the repetitive guitar riff, ‘Flipside’ has its drumming be turned up to the max, ‘Stopgap’ contains… unpredictability so to say. In all due seriousness, I do appreciate the fact that Agata’s playing of the guitar is very impressive. It does help to add a bit of value to 3 + 5. The problem is that to say that that performance is good enough to carry the album is like calling a classical landscape painting the epitome of art. Or arguing that Shakespeare’s plays will forever remain the greatest in the theatre. Or arguing that the Sex Pistols is the greatest punk band of all time and there’s nothing you can to argue against it. 

Just because one factor has been executed masterfully in the medium of a certain work doesn’t mean that it’s enough to justify everything as intended retrospectively. With Melt-Banana, the feedback and electronica is so confrontational that you might as well get a migraine. It’s entirely hyperactive but it doesn’t make you feel hyped up enough to do any worthwhile activity. It feels playful, yet it feels inappropriate to use it even as a shitpost. The songs are short, but pure dissonance and experimentality meant that even spending a few seconds off of the album would be a waste of invaluable time. 

One could argue that the best kind of music doesn’t need a clear artistic purpose, that it simply just needs to rock out without any pretension as is once said by the Oi! scene. I can see the point in it. The issue is that in the case with 3 + 5, it is pure incomprehensibility. It might not be one of the worst albums I have listened to at least in terms of technical artistry, but it is an earbleed of an experience. The only kind of listeners who might enjoy this would have to be the kind of person who loves Merzbow. Unfortunately, I will say that I am not one of them. Not at the very least.

0.2/5