All hail… Guitar Wolf

I can’t believe it’s been nearly a week since the Guitar Wolf gig and I’ve not posted to rave about it.

I only heard of them when a friend asked me if I wanted to go to the gig at 93 Feet East in London. From his description of them, I bought their “best of”, Golden Black, and they sounded like a blast. Ferocious, unhinged Japanese noise rock, taking garage punk and turning the absurd coolness (as well as the amp) up to 11.

They coined their own genre - “Jett Rock ‘n’ Roll” - named to honour Joan Jett. Her irrepressible single ‘I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll’ - the first single I remember buying - was honoured with a spin by the DJ before the gig.

They came onstage to wild cheering. The guitarist/singer struck a pose and downed a bottle of beer in one while the drummer thumped away a tension-raising pulse. Then the first song kicked in, and chaos ensued without many pauses for the next hour or so.

A new track, ‘Sex Napoleon’, is accompanied by a guy dressed as Napaleon waving a big placard saying “SEX!”. The drummer frequently takes the opportunity of things breaking down to just the bass drum to comb his quiff. An audience member makes it up onstage, and suddenly a big hug with the singer turns into the audience guy holding the guitar. He starts playing, but the singer stops him, making him pause to hold a fist in the air as the rhythm builds, and builds, and builds, until eventually he’s signalled to crash away at the strings. He’s not appalling, but the playing hardly matters next to his blatantly astonished exhilaration at playing with Guitar Wolf.

Then there’s a general stage invasion, 20 or so people going mad, eventually being herded by the singer into a human pyramid. It collapses, of course, but it’s just too insane for anything to matter. The singer enters the crowd with his guitar, the lead dutifully fed out by their unflappable roadie, so that he can mount the bar, and wait for the song to erupt again as he leaps to the floor…

Just a fantastic night of extreme rock pushed waaaayyy past irony. If they visit your town, go see ‘em.