“Melt-Banana will melt your face off…and melt your brain!”.
If you have never heard Melt-Banana, you have never heard anything like Melt-Banana. If you have heard Melt-Banana, you will never hear anything like Melt-Banana again, other than Melt-Banana itself.
Where the word ‘inaccessible’ is used, the term ‘acquired taste’ does the trick. The legendary Tokyo band, that formed in 1992, brandishes a one-of-a-kind abrasiveness formed, primarily, from surgical mask-clad Ichiro Agata’s musically-nondescript barbering of his guitar, and Yasuko Onuki’s caterwauling, which subverts what it means to ‘scream’ as a singer. No normative metal/hardcore screaming, but feral, yet terrifically womanly, screaming as high-octane as it is high-pitched, and yes, an acquired taste.
You may not make any sense of Melt-Banana’s music, but through a new virtuosity, in which old head-approved blues soloing and clearcut technical wizardry is traded for rebellious, wrist-breaking drilling, the band has assembled its own catalogue of classics akin to that of any respected guitar band of anciency. Not all of us are enticed by rockstars, but noisy outcasts that resist normality. Melt-Banana is one of the all-time great sets of noisy outcasts that resist normality, and here at Rainy Day, we respect these sets.
I use the same display picture for pretty much everything, in which I’m wearing my black and pink Melt-Banana shirt, itself a replacement for a white one that ended up with a severe ink stain. As a noisy, abrasive boy, as somebody who has probably repelled as many people as he has held onto, due to personality alone, this band, this mega-relatable acquired-taste, means a lot to me. Surely I’m not going to rank all of their albums from worst to best, am I?
#9 – Cactuses Come in Flocks (1994)
Melt-Banana’s is not a faultless discography; there are subsections in which individual albums sound sadly alike. Sophomore Cactuses Come in Flocks rebounds off of the band’s superior debut Speak Squeak Creak by producing what sounds like an outtakes compilation. It is not an outtakes album, but an immediate redux.
Cactuses is an unfortunate collection of clones that includes intentional trolling and inadvertent lapses. Some tracks feature subtle lyrical pinches – To the Core borrows from Chicken Headed Raccoon Dog – while others steal the entire setup of another.
Some steer away from formula; Shuuuuuuuu is as jagged as anything from Speak Squeak Creek but with a calculated, albeit rampant, style of rhythm, while Bunny Wasted a Month Waiting slows everything down before Party-Hat speeds it all back up with one of the more welcome cloning performances – every instrument is destroyed.
But the biggest detour – the group’s most weirdly exciting dive into extra eclecticism at this point – is the album’s Interval, which begins as a crazed, animated sound collage before justifying its existent with a horn melody – that’s right, melody. Melody was a rarity for the Banana in 1994, so much so that a potentially meaningless interlude ends up as one of the band’s best early cuts thanks to upping them notes.
I also love how the guitars of Bored Elephant resembles elephant noises. A nod to King Crimson’s Elephant Talk? Or just an accidental elephant? What’s your favourite accidental elephant?
Unless there are any more golden needles lurking in Cactuses’ thirty-one-track haystack, that’s where any inventiveness ends. Heck, even more incessant than cloning is the odd passage in which nothing of note happens – Dried Up Water Park and Frog Swims the River Down Giggling lure themselves so far away from noise/energy that they may as well be silent. If you’re talking about music on the internet these days, there’s a bit of jargon you’re expected to adhere to, including the concept of the ‘skip’. As much as I wish to avoid all this kiddie slang (I’m old, dammit), I would consider Cactuses Come in Flocks the only true skip in Melt-Banana’s discography.
Best track – Interval.
#8 – Scratch or Stitch (1996)
Have you ever loved anything – in media, specifically – that you know you aren’t going to recommend to anybody close to you? Or maybe you need to offer a fairly rousing disclaimer to anybody eager to experience this thing you’re experiencing? You know it’s an acquired taste; you know it’s unlikely they’ll like it, and you’re bound to, despite all of this, feel disappointed, if not crushed, when they confirm ‘yeah, that’s not for me’ and hand you the restraining order.
Scratch or Stitch is the double-edged sword of Melt-Banana; the iconic (that album cover!), quintessential (that noiiiiise) early Melt-Banana album. It is the one that elicits intrigue, from those who think they can handle the batshit, from those swayed by its billboard of a cover, from those eager to check out anything Albini-produced. It’s difficult to handle, difficult, perhaps, to anyone.
But that’s not why it ranks #8 on this list. Scratch or Stitch dissuades even the accustomed Melt-Banana enjoyer with a clash of underwhelming expectations left over from Cactuses Come in Flocks (even Ketchup-Mess, from Cactuses, is brought back, like a clone of a clone), and false expectations relating to just how exciting Melt-Banana is.
The album doesn’t come with the same uncontrollable firecracker-style unpredictability as Speak Squeak Creak, though it does try to model itself after it, featuring a similar level of songwriting, which, since this is an early Melt-Banana album, is still a fairly minor amount. Many individual takes are a lot more notable than those of Cactuses, mind you, and the album fields some identity from being the well-humoured Melt-Banana album.
What Do You Slaughter next is jovial in its own demented way, until its pipe organ zombie-walks its way in – yes, a pipe organ! Eye-Q Trader is hilarious; arbitrary instrumental freak-outs are cut out for what resembles ‘we’ll be right back’ / ‘technical difficulties’ stand-by music.
While the album, at its core, doesn’t try new things, it attempts new efforts in self-mutilation without straying too far from formula (see the title track), keeping Melt-Banana’s fairly low 1996 fan count happy. Sick Zip Everywhere contains more rhythmic twists than most, including in its vocals, while It’s In the Pillcase sounds like a swarm of bees, and Rough Dogs Have Bumps is, quite simply, a series of meltdowns. A series of meltdowns? Yeah, maybe your friends won’t like it.
Best tracks – Scratch or Stitch – What Do You Slaughter Next?.
#7 – Teeny Shiny (2000)
Where Charlie internationalises the sonically-stripped, but outwardly noisy tone of Melt-Banana pre-synth and pre-melodicism, follow-up Teeny Shiny takes that same maximised sound but grounds it, mostly, in punk.
There is somebody out there getting their ‘what if The Damned was noisier (and more Japanese)?’ question answered as soon as they push play on Teeny Shiny. Opening track Free the Bee is a punk-fest with a popping, bee-freeing hook. Alongside Flash Cube, Or Eyeball (which ups the weird dissonance following the opener, as if immediately sick of the limitations of punk), its pulse palpitates amidst bass-heavy builds and violent, distorted snaps.
Warp, Back Spin features a surf punk energy. First Contact to Planet Q segues straight into it with its ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ speed, and tight composition seemingly tucked underneath. Planet Q might actually be the closest that Teeny Shiny comes to Speak Squeak Creak era Melt-Banana.
Despite being grounded in punk (again, mostly), Teeny Shiny does fish for some extra accompaniment. Call it post-punk; call it London Calling sans length. Jamming with bluesy bass fills and hardcore energy, Moon Flavour evokes the coolest band you ever saw play in a midsized club in Tokyo. The bass + ride combos of Skit Closed, Windy are pure jazz.
The band also exceeds its own expectations, pushes on through, shovelling Wile E. Coyote-style falling and explosion sound effects into Flip and Hit, enlarging its own manifesto on Lost in Mirror via bass fills like an octopus skittering down the stairs, and trash compactor drums.
No matter how much the album resources from established genres accessible to your average Joe (punk, blues, jazz, I guess), Teeny Shiny makes sure to stay challenging through its half-hour run. Even in Melt-Banana’s more recent entries, in which tunefulness is cared for as much as harshness, the band has sounded sickened at the thought of properly crossing over into any charter of mainstreamness. Teeny Shiny is that but tenfold, shunning easy-listening, going beyond difficult-listening; this is futile listening!
Best tracks – Free the Bee – Warp, Back Spin – Moon Flavour.
#6 – Speak Squeak Creak (1994)
Well, it’s going to go one of three ways; you’ll check to make sure your speakers/headphones aren’t broken; be aware that your speakers aren’t broken and subsequently rue the day you ever checked out this band of screaming misfits; or earn yourself a new favourite band that has Stockholm Syndromed you into its madness – it’s the rest of the world that’s mad, not your corner, not your Melt-Banana!
Speak Squeak Creak introduced Melt-Banana’s world of madness, whiplash and schizophrenia in 1994. The band’s debut offers catharsis in schizophrenia; it offers Melt-Banana’s mind-melting, banana-melting sound in a strangely concise nutshell – it’s less than half an hour, and it’s darn good!
We begin with Tail in Garbage (Tekepake), a.k.a. Hell’s pep rally, with slight detections of coherence amidst beautiful, stabbing ambushes, almost akin to the staccato swings of follow-up track Rragg. The way is paved for Yasuko’s heftiest early screams (P.B.D. / Cook Cool Kyau Kuru / Cut Off), some of her most infectious lyrical dealings (“STICK OUT STICK OUT STICK OUT STICK OUT STICK OUT” (Stick Out)), and plenty more to geek out over, including Pierced Eye’s intense, and yes, weird, ending note, soon taking an ass-kicking by a collage of every track on the album.
The very best compositions include Mind Thief, which features a pre-riff that chugs on nothing, just muted strings, before the genuine chugging commences alongside subtle surf rock riffs and tumultuous drum fills. And Dust Head, on which the bass seems to do every job at once; it sings, it creates the necessary backbone, it rocks as heavily as the drums, it is convention and anomaly in one.
Those dedicated to Melt-Banana’s noise will be happy to learn of its consistency on Speak Squeak Creak. The band’s debut is one of those great albums for which ‘if anything, it’s too action packed’ is a valid criticism, partly due to Melt-Banana’s own sound improving once smoothening out, partly because other bands – see Otoboke Beaver, decades later – would take a similar approach, put it in a clearer post-hardcore setting and make it a bit more accessible, and partly because the action is so violent, it might kill you or something.
Best tracks – Dust Head – Mind Thief.
#5 – 3+5 (2024)
Ah, Japan. A love of Japanese culture will allow you to get away with being both a profound lover of culture and a philistine. One of the country’s most available – to us all, auteurs and plebs – exports is video games, the classic soundtracks of which had influenced Melt-Banana even in the band’s early stages.
This affinity for game music has often been buried deep behind abrasive noise, but while 3+5 – the band’s 2024 “comeback” – has plenty of abrasive noise, the game influence manages to break through it like a CRT television slung through a laughing man’s teeth. Yasuko is ready to wail, Agata is ready to pounce on his guitar like a hyena, but the electronics pursued – many of which introduce these songs – feel like countdowns at the outsets of Mario Kart races, or general Nintendo 64 fun. Many of the partying drumbeats and mechanical rhythm guitar slides match these motifs.
This is great if you already love Melt-Banana’s style but fancy a bit of an add-on, a bit of DLC, or for older gamers, an expansion pack. 3+5 still launches the familiar aesthetics of Melt-Banana, whilst retaining the nifty bits of melodicism that Bambi’s Dilemma fondled and Fetch perfected. The guitar intro of Scar loops with melody, though you can tell it’s likely leading to something far more thundery, whilst Code begins the album with one of Melt-Banana’s flashiest and most focussed hooks, again, still thundery.
Slightly new touch-ups on the core Melt-Banana sound include Whisperer’s descending chord progression, that sees the band search for something bordering on a classic rock sound, and the traditional hardcore-esque Stopgap.
Perhaps 3+5 is a combination of cultures. After all, Flipside melts down immediately, unravels itself like any Melt-Banana song would, and swarms its audience with powerful, unhinged noise mechanics. It’s a team-up! A team-up of the sort of sound aesthetics we associate with video games and Melt-Banana’s own musical culture, its own musical language. Would we have wanted it any other way? The album was released in 2024; eleven years after Fetch! I was a long-suffering Melt-Banana fan already by that point; why eagerly anticipate a new Melt-Banana album if you don’t want there to be at least a bit of Melt-Banana to it?
Best tracks – Code – Scar – Whisperer.
#4 – Bambi’s Dilemma (2007)
The work of Melt-Banana is ingenious as well as impulsive. Despite Charlie’s greatness, this observation – which may or may not be bold, depending on to whom you’re talking – would become a lot more evident once breaking from its approach, initially via Cell-Scape, then Bambi’s Dilemma’s melodies, atmospheres, and medley of madness that plays from T for Tone to In Store (Abbey Road if there was a banana peel on the zebra crossing).
Extra melody is squeezed wherever possible in a manner that would be perfected on Fetch. Spider Snipe, The Call of the Vague and Green Eyed Devil each contain subtle riffing behind the vocals that allows the moment to feel melodic even when it is just a shouting contest. These moments are one-upped by the deceptively sweet Cracked Plaster Cast – specifically its “earth-size trashcan” vocal and bridge’s oddly soppy guitar melody – and Cat Brain Land, which is a song about a cat (incidentally, Dog Song is about a dog).
Ethereality is also squeezed, washing over noise punk in a match that should result in a terrible clash, but doesn’t, which I think we can owe to chaos being the typical order of the day for Melt-Banana. Feedback, occasional bleeps, samples, warping effects, tapes being mashed up, and other spacey effects all reel in a whole lotta atmosphere, whilst Type: Ecco System totally commits to ambience in a great big sound prism; guitars and drums are still present, actually quite dictatorial, but the entire track sounds like a ping pong ball bouncing through the walls of a space station, followed by comets bouncing through the walls of a space station – rest in peace, space station.
Perhaps Bambi’s Dilemma was Melt-Banana’s way of attempting a variety-driven jack-of-all-trades album, with mostly upswings in melody and atmosphere emanating. After all, Blank Page of the Blind is classic hardcore punk – well, Melt-Banana’s idea of classic hardcore punk – and Crow’s Paint Brush (Colour Repair) contains passages of softer indie rock, including a beautiful tremolo-picked, high-end guitar line.
If nothing else, the album proves that Melt-Banana can be quintessentially, charismatically noisy, and still diverse – regardless of how diverse. Bambi’s Dilemma puts to shame the monostylistic energy of Melt-Banana’s first three albums, whilst paving the way for an even better version of the approach the album takes.
Best tracks – Spider Snipe – Blank Page of the Blind – Cracked Plaster Cast – Cat Brain Land.
#3 – Cell-Scape (2003)
Cell-Scape could’ve been a “sell-out” album in the hands of any other band. It takes a special group of songwriters to form the rich melodies that make the album Melt-Banana’s first truly accessible, whilst retaining a grip on the strange integrity that comes with moulding the style of batshit hardcore the band was already associated with. Basically, they never took the easy way out and made everything sound familiar and radio; they never alienated anyone, neither those eager to sink their teeth into the band’s repertoire but found their sound too anti-social, nor mainstay supporters.
There are two songs that get dangerously close to the forms of progressions one may deem too familiar; Lost Parts Stinging Me So Cold and If It Is the Deep Sea, I Can See You There. But they’re two of the album’s best songs, both extremely catchy, the former Pixies-esque in its chord progression, which when placed alongside Melt-Banana’s key traits amounts to a storm both outrageous and pleasing to the ear; the latter is the perfect, somehow baroque pop-esque finale, surreal.
Ichiro Agata would typically record more than one guitar part per song, but Cell-Scape features more overdubbing and more in-studio tinkering, epitomised by A Hunter in the Rain to Cut the Neck Up in the Present Shape’s guitar delay and cut-off sections during which a bass guitar forms a tidier groove to link the song back to its initial mood.
It’s quite funny – don’t all laugh at once – that the balls-to-the-wall noisy moments of Cell-Scape, or at least those evocative of early Melt-Banana, could be considered its detours. The five-note guitar screeches of Chain-Shot to Have Some Fun give off fumes, like the riffs formed by the band’s earlier work decided to put on their best threads and be a bit more outgoing. The sliding riff of Like a White Bat in a Box, Dead Matters Go On sounds like car tires made of whale guts. So many post-hardcore bands have replicated this riff since.
A Dreamer Who is Too Weak to Face Up to is plenty hardcore; bad boy serial killer hardcore, whilst gripping to Melt-Banana’s penchant for doing more than what needed to be done without succumbing to overkill. It finds a tidy place on an album that does more than what anybody would’ve expected of Melt-Banana back in 2003.
Best tracks – A Dreamer Who Is Too Weak to Face Up to – Lost Parts Stinging Me So Cold – If It Is the Deep Sea, I Can See You There.
#2 – Charlie (1998)
“Hi, you’re listening to Melt-Banana. They’re so hard that by the conservation of hardness in the universe, you won’t have any hardness left for your cock” – Mike Patton
Charlie is Melt-Banana’s embrace of the ‘90s, in which anybody could be as freewheeling, abrasive or Ween as possible, and might not feel like a total societal outcast – “might not”. The band’s hacked-up gremlin disco would let in even the most dubious of critics for its well-reviewed fourth album; a momentous time of acceptance for the little engine that couldn’t help but scream.
The praise that Charlie received is deserved, with or without complying with the album’s ‘acceptable in the ‘90s’ approach to insane liberalism. It runs on the same motor as its three predecessors, but its ideas are brighter, shinier and as well-varied as possible for an album that manages to fit in with the Melt-Banana canon of the time.
Erratic expectations are met on Introduction for Charlie (it’s the opening track, but you probably figured that out, professor), but savannah animal guitar sirens and electronica-inspired breaks in the beat land a few left hooks, like a schizophrenic sound southpaw. The dance-y influence gives Spathic its ‘holy fuck’ breakbeats and jungle vibes. A less tactful band would’ve been corny, but this is just untameable and wicked. There’s also a tasty riff in there – as you might expect – which is quickly matched by Tapir’s Flown Away’s hardcore, music-defying slide-riffs.
The album wrestles with the choice between of being the same Melt-Banana or a new kind of hen. It continues to explore via Cannot’s post-industrial production and Chipped Zoo on the Wall, Wastes in the Sky’s avant-garde sound collage. But Section Eight and Stimulus for Revolting Virus favour noise over songwriting or new ideas, and the noise kicks ass.
F.D.C. For Short is a theatrical Japanese mosh pit; unrepenting speed, heavy sass, blasting shockwaves. Amid the tribal drums of Circle-Jack (Chase the Magic Words, Lego Lego) is a shout-along punk battle cry, a clear Damned influence. I realise I can’t mention The Damned enough when describing Melt-Banana, but it’s far more appropriate here, as a cover of Neat Neat Neat is included on the album as a -1 hidden track.
Guitars are pummelled through these songs, with innovative approaches to leads and riff-making. Regardless of influence, Charlie is a raging ‘god damn’ of a rock guitar album. This is the album that earns Ichiro Agata a little more status as great guitarist, punk or otherwise – he was not put on this planet to be as underrated as he is. Worship him now, or else…
Best tracks – Circle-Jack (Chase the Magic Words, Lego Lego) – Spathic!! – Tapir’s Flown Away – F.D.C. For Short.
#1 – Fetch (2013)
Like Sleater-Kinney – because I like mentioning Sleater-Kinney – Melt-Banana spent the ‘90s rebelling despite limitations that had been put in place; a clear budget that stripped back its instrumentation to its most punk, its most garage, before maximising its sonic palette once journeying further into the twenty-first century.
The twenty-first century side of the coin, which initiated more-so with Cell-Scape, is the fusion of noisy erraticism – not to be confused with erratic noisiness – with sweetheart melodies, passable chord progressions and other gooey approachability. Once Bambi Dilemma hit shelves – in whatever shops were stocking Melt-Banana, if any – this sound had become expected of the band. Still, was anybody expecting this side of Melt-Banana to produce its best album? At a time that would be considered ‘late career’, no less?
The answer is ‘yeah, probably’, because Melt-Banana was already on a roll with Cell-Scape and Bambi’s Dilemma, a roll that kept rolling with Fetch and has since continued with 3+5. Fetch is no surprise but the fullest possible realisation of this version of Melt-Banana; self-produced, mechanical-melodic madness, on which great riffs are countable and hardcore-as-hell (Left Dog (Run, Caper, Run)), on which the band makes its most paranoid song (My Missing Link), on which Yasuko violently screams but what comes out of her mouth forms into notation (Vertigo Game).
Many of the best moments of Fetch are those that are extra melodic, extra fun. They may not be as good as the best of Cell-Scape, but they form a continuity throughout the album that Cell-Scape didn’t have. The beautiful chorus of Schemes of the Tails is unexpected; still noisy, still kooky, but unreservedly passionate, melodic and greatly human. It contains a melody that reaches for the sky, levitating amid a chord progression that simply swishes from a minor chord to its relative major; a sudden familiarity, a sudden sense of longing or reconciliation. The bouncy bassline of Zero twitches between octaves like Blur’s Girls and Boys. It dances along a I-IV-vi progression; a zany, cheekily sentimental way to wave goodbye whilst remaining ear-piercing.
Some are simply fuller than those of prior Melt-Banana albums (Infection Defective / Candy Gun), fetching bulkier sonic textures whilst hyping themselves up with trademark noise. Grapple with the thought that this is the peak of the band’s powers; it is stylistically Melt-Banana (you know, if you know of Melt-Banana and you put it on, you know it’s Melt-Banana), but rarely tormentingly abrasive, instead taking the band’s fusion of noise and melody to its most adorable. Its role as the truly digestible banana album never feels alienating or degrading; it never feels unintegral to the band’s way of doing things, its plot to take over the world.
Best tracks – Left Dog (Run, Caper, Run) – Schemes of the Tails – Zero.
Screw It! Let’s Do a Top Ten! (Top Ten Melt-Banana Songs)
10. Scar
9. Cracked Plaster Cast
8. Circle-Jack (Chase the Magic Words, Lego Lego)
7. A Dreamer Who Is Too Weak to Face Up to
6. Tapir’s Flown Away
5. Spathic!!
4. If It Is the Deep Sea, I Can See You There
3. Schemes of the Tails
2. Zero
1. Lost Parts Stinging Me So Cold
Honourable Mentions:
F.D.C. for Short
Candy Gun
Code
Seeds
