Melt Banana: Live At The Future Yard

Japanese noise makers Melt Banana returned to the UK to promote their new album, the mysteriously titled ‘3+5’, the follow up to ‘Fetch’ which came out way back in 2013, though ahead of them we had the delights of VX, and the wonderfully named Horsebastard.

VX aka Neil Whitehead is moonlighting from space rockers VRTX, he is hunkered down over  a keyboard stand acting as a mount for an array of noise generators, a compact drum machine and a primitive synthesiser, the starkly lit stage perfectly complimenting the powerful rhythmic noises he is creating, squalling electronic pulses cut through the murk, sampled voices bounce around the room, it’s reminiscent of toned down Japnoise – the frequencies aren’t up there with the likes of Merzbow, and so had me thinking of perhaps the darker moments of 80’s Caberat Voltaire. The music is brutal, the underlying feel is of soundtracking an impending disaster – that said with a 12” chunk of tempered steel being held in place by Black & Decker Workmate adjacent to him, you knew the soundscapes were going to get much harsher, and as he took an electric drill to the steel the blast of noise caused the sizable audience to momentarily flinch. VX delivered an impressive set, granted it’s not exactly a visual excursion, but sonically there was much to enjoy

Horsebastard – I’ve seen the name on gig flyers, but this was my first time catching these local grindcore purveyors of what they self-describe as “equestrian blastcore” – bar the drummer, they are perhaps the most unlikely looking extreme band I’ve encountered for some time, but don’t be fooled for as they launch into a maelstrom of blast beats its clear that despite the humour on display they are musically tight; the music is full frontal aggression, each track a chaotic stop start assault on the senses, weirdly odd timed rhythms are evident within the attack, and then we get the vocals – from almost sub sonic guttural growls to high pitched off kilter yelps as the vocalist Chriss Reese pinballs the stage, between every song he simply shouts “Horsebastard” before drummer Trippy commences another offensive – I don’t think I have ever seen drummer play so fast! To the uninitiated grindcore / blastcore is simply noise, and there are a lot of poor bands of this genre, Horsebastard are not one of them, yes, its violent music but within the chaos there is some deft musicianship at work here – well worth further investigation.

Ahead of Melt Banana a wall of backline was positioned close to the front of the stage, dramatically shrinking the depth, Guitarist Ichiro Agata is stage right as ever in his surgical mask, two huge pedal boards housing an abundance of effects pedals lie in front of him, to the left the diminutive vocalist Yako has a laptop balanced on a cabinet, strapped to her right hand is a highly illuminated MIDI controller – Agata drenched in blue light nods to Yako and then all hell breaks loose – the sheer level of volume is intense, the machine fired beats punching hard, it genuinely feels like the fabric of the building is reverberating, tortured guitar riffs are capable of shredding the skin from your face and then that infamous high pitched voice from Yako as she bounces around the stage, the lights suddenly switch to backlit, burning into the already moshing crowd raising the intensity. 

Melt Banana are in full flight, its frenetic, its immensely powerful, her vocals might be almost indistinguishable but Yako is in control, she dominates the front of the stage, commanding the audience as she slices through the air with that MIDI unit, Agata drags brutal riffs, and octave burning screams as he furiously downstrokes his guitar, he’s kicking the crap out of the effects pedals – morphing the sounds into blur of sound and pure energy. Its frankly impossible to know which songs they are playing, probably a couple from ‘Fetch’ and no doubt a fair few from ‘3+5’ but such matters are purely trivial when there is this much fun to witness – the energy never lets up, even for a moment – the beats morph into a sort of disco pattern, granted it’s disco that’s currently on fire, but momentarily you could almost dance to this, ahead of the sound of an Apollo rocket lifting off; sheets of noise wash over blast beats & grindcore, before glitching into a Frontline Assembly like EBM, and through to a tsunami of hyper pop before they leave the stage.

Returning minutes later in response to frenzied audience, the chant of “one more song” ringing out. Yako, smiling, advises in her broken English “We do nine more… but some are short” and the chaos erupts once more, the crowd knowing this is there last chance are ricochetting off each other, bodies clattering into one and all, some of these ‘songs’ including the brilliant ‘We Love Choco-Pa!’ are at best 5 seconds long – ultra short blasts of mayhem that they even manage to force lyrics into ahead of finishing with the gorgeously unrelenting ‘Candy Gun’ complete with waves brushing ashore, multiple layers of guitar distortion, desperate shrill screams and yelps, there are even pop hooks within the blitzkrieg of noise!

Challenging, possibly unhinged, but brilliant madcap fun!