It’s been a little while since Melt-Banana graced us with a brand-new new album. Laying the foundations of their Japanese noise-rock style in 1992, since then, the band has continued to challenge everything we think we know about hardcore. Bouncing back almost a decade after their last album, 3+5 sees the band restore similar frantic sensibilities to Return of 13 Hedgehogs, while simultaneously testing the grounds for more experimental play.
Despite their lack of new releases, the band has remained active within the music industry, touring relentlessly. Officially sharing their debut single of the year in June, ‘Flipside,’ provided the first teaser of what to expect from 3+5.
Made up of frontwoman Yasuko Onuki and guitarist Ichiro Agata, Melt-Banana aren’t your average hardcore project. Between the two of them, they have managed to create an abstract universe of obscure noise-rock songs. When describing their soundscape, few words spring to mind: vibrant, cutting-edge and avant-garde. Over the years, the tools they have used to craft their sound have been nothing short of cinematic.
In this brand new album, the duo are returning with something much more explosive and riveting than their previous ten studio albums. Punk at its core, all while hyper-pop focused with glimpses of fun experimental tendencies, 3+5 is armoured with a tracklist of nine genre-bending releases that perfectly captures Melt-Banana at their best.
Introductory ‘Code’ bears no witness, as it opens with piercing keys and is followed by warped guitar shreds from Agata and Onuki’s distinctive computerised vocals. Annihilating on the guitar with stunning riffage, Agata introduces the album with a burst of adrenaline that’s almost hard to describe. It’s hectic yet fanciful all at the same time.
Second track, ‘Puzzle’, is as easy album standout. It’s hypercharged nature is fused by riffs at neckbreak speed and punching vocal delivery. ‘Scar’ later follows as another album standout for its epic, adrenaline-driven nature. It begins with immediate glam-rock tendencies that are shortly fased out into shoegazy indie guitar sensibilities.
After hanging their shoes up for almost ten years, Melt-Banana are finally back, this time with an album that’s definitive of their bizarre, yet charasmatic ideas. Throughout the tracklist, the band filter through various genres – more than we’ve seen them experiment with before as each track keeps you guessing.
3+5 see’s the duo present listeners with a fresh take on heavy music as they double down on experimental sounds and pay a nod to their Japanese culture through the subcultures of anime and gaming. A project with little boundaries, 3+5 stands on its own two feet as a concoction of hyperactive releases weaving in disco, electronica, cyberpunk, metal and more.
This is Melt-Banana.
