It’s never easy to tell which bands will burn bright but briefly and which will harness their intensity and progress with staying power. With the release of 3+5, Melt-Banana, since 2013 pared down to the duo of vocalist Yasuko Onuki and guitarist Ichiro Agata, reignites the fire with a blitz combo of noise rock, hyperpop, hardcore, metal, and video game soundtracks that’s unrelenting and glorious. Replacing bass guitar and drum kit with synths and machine rhythms bolsters an approach that goes far beyond caffeinated and into the realms of elevated hyperactivity. Manically precise and often catchy, 3+5 is available August 23 on vinyl, compact disc, and digital through Melt-Banana’s label A-ZAP Records.
3+5 is Melt-Banana’s eighth studio album (or ninth, depending on how Cactuses Come in Flocks is counted) since debuting with Speak Squeak Creak in 1994, that album issued by Japanese noise guitar titan K.K. Null’s NUX Organization label. This connection placed them on a roster with Zeni Geva (Null’s band), Space Streakings, and Merzbow and as part of a wider wave of Japanese noise that featured Boredoms at the forefront.
It was a 1995 tour with Mr. Bungle and the release of Scratch or Stitch late that year by the Skin Graft label that really broke Melt-Banana to a larger US audience. They’ve been prolific since, with two live albums and two singles compilations expanding their discography, but it’s been over a decade since Fetch, their first release as a duo, came out.
The good news is that 3+5 shows no traces of rust. To the contrary, the music thrives as ever on a heightened level of precision that’s rarely heard outside of prog rock (or its post-hardcore stylistic descendent, math-rock). But Melt-Banana are only fitfully inclined toward proggy-mathy intricacy; instead, the focus is on torrid paces, unfaltering stamina, heaviness, density, elasticity, abrasion, and an increased attention to contemporary arena pop aesthetics. When combined with those video game-like synthetic textures, the music’s thrust is pummeling as the melodic surges are welcoming.
Speak Squeak Creak’s 25 cuts in 30 minutes solidified early associations to hardcore. After seeing them in ’95 on that Mr. Bungle tour, I described them a feral offspring of Minor Threat and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks (Yasuko cites Lydia Lunch as a vocal influence). Elements of hardcore are still tangible in Melt-Banana in 2024, but the songs are all considerably longer; 3+5 is nine songs total a little over 24 minutes, an appropriate hardcore punk album duration; anything much longer would just be overkill.
Once “Code” gets rolling there’s really no letup, though there are a few high points as the set barrels forth. The emphasis on electronics and programmed beats when combined with such savage velocities, can suggest that 3+5 was assembled (a la some examples of electronic music) instead of “played”; indeed, there are spots in “Case D” that sound like they could’ve been concocted by John “Plunderphonics” Oswald in his bunker.
I emphasize Oswald because there is still a human element to 3+5 that often dominates. Those assembled moments aren’t clinical or cold; this is a hot fucking record if ever one was. It just that a few spots get so hot that if humans were fully responsible they blister and char and fall prey to epileptic seizures.
Melt-Banana’s music can be caustic, but they don’t register as angry on 3+5. The album instead hits like Yako and Agata got hopped up on multiple pots of strong coffee and then just went for it. The songs do often deliver a Dan Deacon-like joyous gush. Fists are pumping, lighters are aloft, bodies in dayglo spandex are bounding forth from trampolines. Does this read like a bad time? I sure hope not.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
