Punk Rock: Guitar Wolf's Loverock

You know those big grates in the sidewalk in downtown areas? Sometimes they’re delivery access or ventilation or simply letting light down into a basement floor window. Well, imagine one of those right above a basement where you hear some incredibly raucous punk guitar. So you lower a single microphone down through the sidewalk grate into the open basement window, the microphone dangling in the midst of the band banging away downstairs. Guitar Wolf just began the studio recordings for their album, Loverock.

That’s not actually how this record was made, but nonetheless, Loverock from this black leather clad, Japanese punk trio, sounds much like a single microphone recording the band in a basement party. The sound is unbalanced, distorted, and muddy, just like you’re standing amidst the cigarette smoke, smashed beer bottles, sweat, pounding fists, moshing crowd.

The lyrics are shouted Japanese. The songs are Ramones-length. There’s the Japanese use of just enough English to be cool, using such varied vocabulary as “rock,” “f**k you,” “10-9-8-7…,” and “baby.”

When you listen again to the Kinks on “” and “,” you feel like they’re going to explode on those guitar solo breaks. Take that breakneck feeling, cranked up with all of the electric flash of Japanese neon at night, and you’ve got the guitar solo breaks on “Violent Letter” and “Shinkansen High Tension.” Plus, “Shinkansen” includes a surf rock riff which furthers the extreme sport of this punk rock.

The U.S. release on Narnack Records nicely includes English translations of all lyrics. Where the 5,6,7,8’s really tap into the rockabilly of the 50’s for their punk rock, Guitar Wolf lands squarely in the Ramones-centered punk tradition. Not just a “been there, done that” sound, Guitar Wolf truly is that ferocious band you heard in the basement of some downtown building, the band you just had to dangle a mic in front of because you couldn’t believe that the guys were self-combusting in the sonic energy they were creating.

So, then, listen to Loverock with a strong warning against putting in the disc while driving a car. You’ll be doubling up the speed limit before you get one minute into the opening title track.

Thanks to Narnack Records for the review copy.