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Merzbow

The undeniable king of all noise. There has been noise artists before, there will be noise artists after, but none of them will ever achieve the notoriety of Merzbow. When I first encountered the name, I thought, like many others, that Merzbow was a band's name, but it is actually a one man affair. This person, Masami Akita, has been releasing music since the late seventies and eighties. There have literally been hundreds of albums and collaborations since then (there is actually a "merzbox" out there which includes fifty CDs worth of music)!

The first thing I've heard by this artist was the album Venereology on Relapse records which is to this day, the album I consider to be THE most unbearable album in the history of mankind. From it's opening seconds to the last, it is an relentless assault on your auditory senses. I have never managed to listen to the whole thing. I actually really enjoyed a small anecdote about Merzbow involving a friend of mine while we were both working at HMV in Montreal back in the mid-nineties. Some client was out after something unusual for his son who was apparently into strange music and was asking for the "weirdest, strangest music" my friend could offer him. After having suggested things like Skinny Puppy and Nine Inch Nails, thinking the father meant something along these line, my friend was suddenly confronted with the question: "Give me the worst you've got!". Being the good employee that he was, he immediately knew what he should give him in this case so he handed the client a copy of Venereology. He warned the client several times that this album was simply "unbearable", but the person insisted on getting it. To this day I wish I could have seen the reaction on this boy's face as he put this CD on for the first time on Christmas Day.

Even though Merzbow has broadened his horizons somewhat today, he still comes back to his roots once in a while. Some albums might be smoother, but beware, most of them still carry his signature harsh noises. There are thousands of albums out there, and unfortunately I can't say that I can suggest them all (first of all because I haven't heard so many of them - maybe twelve or thirteen different releases - and second, because, there is just so much noise I can bear without putting a bullet in my brain. Unlike Wolf Eyes, Merzbow's music is just simply too aggressive to be interesting all of the time. Get your hearing aid ready! You're going to need it!

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