Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 20/03/06
Label: Must Destroy

Let's call 2006 rock'n'roll Year Zero, shall we? Where are we at on the evolutionary scale of this maddening 50-year-old beast, that serves up euphoria and frustration in equal measure? Take a look at the collection of cross-eyed dullards at this year's Brit Awards, pick up a copy of the latest NME, as it sneakily morphs into Smash Hits, or contemplate suicide as you scan the charts. It's a rum do, frankly. Everything's so sanitised, manufactured and packaged to death that Iggy would be spinning in his coffin were he not still using it as a bed. Have we terminally lost sight of what this is all about?

Enter Guitar Wolf, a trio of psychotic leather-bound Japanese die-hards who are perhaps the most demented example of the true spirit of rock'n'roll currently on Earth. Formed some 20 years ago in Tokyo, the band - Seiji, Billy and Toru - immediately became Guitar Wolf, Bass Wolf and Drum Wolf. They may have adapted their names in tribute to The Ramones and called their last LP "Kung Fu Ramone", but their New York City forefathers really can't hold a flame-thrower to the beyond the call of duty commitment on display here.

Guitar Wolf first came to the attention of many in 1999, with the release of the epic noise and destruction of their third album, "Jet Generation". Following the impressively titled "Missile Me" and "Planet Of The Wolves", the new record was decreed by the band themselves and - in all probability - every single person that heard it, to be the loudest album ever. Indeed, across the course of "Golden Black", a 26-track greatest hits, it very quickly becomes obvious that while much of Guitar Wolf's smashed garage punk is disgustingly unlistenable it is, conversely, utterly refreshing.

Saying more in titles like "Murder By Rock", "UFO Romantics", "I Love You, OK" and "Kawasaki ZII 750 Rock'n'Roll" than the Kaiser Chiefs will across the course of their hopefully short-lived career, Guitar Wolf are so detached from accepted norms and bent modern rock formulas as to be assumed nihilistic rock cavemen. And all the better they, and we, are for it. Each song generally follows a similar pattern, commencing with a cry of "1-2-3-4", before a banzai attack of punk-a-billy feedback and B-movie scree crashes through 120 seconds of sick, speaker-cone melting white sheet-metal sound.

Special mention goes to "Lightning's Melody", where Guitar Wolf make so much noise they overshadow a thunderstorm, and the closing apocalypse of "Summertime Blues", which molests Eddie Cochran's original into a sonic man-trap. Ultimately, not only does "Golden Black" serve as a terrifying example of rock at its most primal, violent and necessary, but is also a fitting tribute to Billy Bass Wolf, who tragically died last year of a heart attack at the stunningly young age of 38. Need we say anymore?

    by Ben Gilbert