Freshly returned from a jaunt touring with the
Big Day Out festival in Australia, three-girl hardcore freakout
Red Bacteria Vacuum has brought back more than just a suntan. Sure, they’ve always been a fierce live band, but for tonight’s show at Heaven’s Door, a perfectly dark’n’dirty basement live house in Tokyo’s groovy Sangenjaya district, they sound tough even by their own standards.
Originally formed in Osaka in 1998,
Red Bacteria Vacuum quickly outgrew the local scene and moved to Tokyo in 2002. Their sound is a compulsive blend of hard punk guitars, vicious rhythm and ear-bending pop melodies, with the odd electronic sample lending a slight industrial edge.
On their three albums and mini-albums, this comes across as brash and exhilarating, if not necessarily overly sophisticated; but to make sense of
Red Bacteria Vacuum you really need to see them live. It’s a whirlwind: Guitar-vocalist
IKUM! wields her instrument like a weapon, making light work of her barrage of power chords while machine-gunning the mic with super-cool vocal stylings. Her face is as animated as a firework display. She has a habit of winking at the audience, but don’t confuse that with an attempt at being cute:
IKUM! could eat you up for breakfast and still have room for dessert.
Drummer
JASMINE looks straight ahead, battering her kit with brutal yet controlled force. For the songs with samples – such as the wildly catchy
Horror Samba, a four-minute slice of crude guitar grind and rhythm – she dons a pair of bulky stage headphones, but it’s clear that she, not the backing track, is driving the tune.
And then there’s
KASSAN,
Red Bacteria Vacuum’s secret weapon.
KASSAN is the sort of bassist Dr Frankenstein would have created if he’d gotten into A&R as a career change from mad scientistry. Her baselines are ragged raw, juddering with focused power as her slight frame jerks around the stage. She throws back her head and unleashes a bloodcurdling scream that makes you feel very sorry for her poor, tortured larynx. And yet between songs she exudes sunshine and smiles, bellowing the word “Enjoy!” in English between chunks of banter about the band’s adventures.
Red Bacteria Vacuum is a regular here at Heaven’s Door, which is one of the few Tokyo venues where bands are not charged to play. The place has a family vibe that makes bands and punters feel at home, so maybe that has as much to do with
Red Bacteria Vacuum’s easy assurance on stage tonight as their successful Aussie trip. Then again, they’re no strangers to the world circuit, having bothered the US a few times and joined the infamous
Japan Nite tour. They’re the sort of band who could enjoy a long and fruitful career abroad; in Japan, where the underground and mainstream rarely mix, they play to small but loyal crowds, and their luster has only grown stronger over the past 13 years.
Though they play for just 30 minutes tonight – it’s a five-band event organized by a local music nut to celebrate his birthday –
Red Bacteria Vacuum leaves the audience scraping their jaws from the sticky beer-stained floor. Tighter than ever and at the top of their game, they remind us that the best bands in Japan can often be found far underground. Grab a shovel and dig deep.
For more information on Red Bacteria Vacuum, please check their official website and their MySpace profile.
