Sounds From The Junkshop #122 - Electric Eel Shock

 

"When I am high, my axe is acid!" - Electric Eel Shock - Scream For Me

It's often been said that the Japanese do rock 'n' roll slightly different to us Brits. Cultural barriers, call it what you will but it's safe to say that the vast majority of Japanese rock bands I've encountered down the years have often mixed brilliance and oddness. Cases in point - Guitar Wolf (Link Wray obsessed leather clad garage punks who covered Rumble in a different style on every single one of their albums), EZO (Gene Simmons managed facepaint clad hair metallers whose albums inevitably sounded like '80s Kiss but much heavier)*, Shonen Knife (Kurt Cobain approved all-girl Ramonesy pop-punks with a hard edge) and Mika Bomb (same thing except ten years later and minus the Kurt endorsement). I mean, granted, not everything in this genre works (as anyone who remembers Babymetal's truly dreadful nails-on-chalkboard attempt at thrash will tell you) but sometimes you end up getting a moment of rare genius. Such as Electric Eel Shock.

* - I was actually half-considering doing a Garbage Days Revisited on EZO but, on listening back, their album isn't actually as good as I remember it - plenty of insanity but aside from the single Flashback Heart Attack, not a lot in the way of actual top drawer tunes. Ah well...

I think my first encounter with EES was hearing a song called Scream For Me Baby on a compilation somewhere - it might have been the Screaming Tarts guys over in York who used to put out some pretty decent selections of up and coming bands that the likes of Kerrap! wouldn't have touched with a bargepole at this point because they weren't wearing enough guyliner. It was a brilliantly demented stomper of a tune built on a rolling glam rock style drumbeat, brutally heavy stripped back garage rock guitars and some fantastically gibberish lyrics. Duly encouraged, I went out and bought the attendant album Beat Me and its predecessor Go Europe! Suffice to say I wasn't disappointed.

Electric Eel Shock were basically Guitar Wolf's even more insane upstart younger brothers, peddling a feral mix of garage rock snottiness and lumbering stoner riffs. Oh and, as you'd expect, some of the most fantastically gibberish lyrics you were ever likely to hear. Song titles include Bastard! (sample lyric "You stink of fish/You disgust me!"), Don't Say Fuck, I Can Hear The Sex Noise, Waaaa!, Japanese Meets Chinese In USA and the excellently named I Wanna Be A Black Sabbath Guy But I Should Be A Black Bass. That's bass as in the fish by the way...Electric Eel Shock also gained a bit of notoriety at the time for their "Rock 'n' Roll Fishing" videos on Youtube, then in its infancy. They're still up on there now and...well, let's just say they're just as unhinged as ever nearly two decades on.

You probably don't need me to tell you this but suffice to say that chart success very much did not come a-knockin' for Electric Eel Shock. But they did manage to cultivate a pretty impressive underground following over here and are still out there touring every so often including once supporting Danko Jones on a bill that was all kinds of awesome. I got their next two albums, 2007's solid enough Transworld Ultra Rock and 2009's actually rather ace Sugoi Indeed - standout tracks on this one being the low-slung ZZ Top style boogie of Mr Toad and the frenetic No Shit Sherlock. After that, it all went a bit quiet but a quick scan reveals that EES did eventually get around to following up Sugoi with an album in 2016 called Sweet Generation. Which I intend go and check out as soon as I've finished writing this 'ere retrospective.

The last time I saw Electric Eel Shock was in 2019 just after moving back to Leeds when they supported Michael Monroe at the Brudenell. They were just as wonderfully unhinged as ever, cranking out the riffs (including the customary run through Sabbath's Iron Man) and with a drummer using four sticks who was naked apart from a strategically placed sock a la the Red Hot Chili Peppers before they went all MOR and boring. Given that Mr Monroe was also on fine form that night, suffice to say it was a top evening and not a bad way to reacclimatise myself to gigs up north by any means. Unfortunately then the pandemic came and knocked the whole live scene on its head just a few months later. But hopefully it won't be too long before we get a new EES album and some tour dates in the pipeline. Long may their wonderful brand of insanity reign.