6 October

Three girls up on stage look like Santa's wandered out of a dark alley in San Francisco.

Watching the lead singer's quivering flanks exposed under her tiny tight lace up leather.

it was fetish gear and hard core punk rock, unintelligable, but it sounded more like english than japanese, what words came through shrill over a sonic wall of feedback and fast twiddled bass. "it was english - made up english. japanese english" according to the band afterwards.

Each song was a screaming incantation, a cry for justice and for sex and for ignomy - that each person in the audience might feel at once liberated and shat upon. No one was dancing dammit, but the girls on stage were shreiking hard, during their seven minutes up on stage during this day long Tokyo indepdent music festival. Between each of the four songs they managed to cram into their set, the aural assault ended and the lead singer Erieza would say "thank you very much gracious guests, thank you for listening, here is our next song." Polite chipper hard core sex fetish punk.

Afterwards outside, a gay boy with long sideburns tells me i'm a nice boy. i'm angling for Erieza's email; as the lead singer and only member of the band to stay through two personelle changes, she's clearly the sex-force behind this agro-enterprise.

Pussy Cannibal Holocaust

Like the Slits or the Raincoats? Half the age of Le Tigre with none of the samples or quality production. But somehow the same media awareness seeps through. Besides the propulsive beats, the short songs keep the attention span unwavering, and you can hear echoes of Swedish death metal, television public service announcements, New York, and finally, the Velvet Underground.

Their album "Pussy Cannibal Holocaust" is a series of explosions, short and ramming - strap on punk. And then, somehow, a steady a beat, 60s mellowtron electronic synth, and recognizable music. Erieza starts singing a jaunty tune. You'll recognize it as Sister Ray, the Velvet Underground's tale of transvestites and murder.

While everyone from Dave Navarro to Siouxsie and the Banshees have covered Venus in Furs, Sister Ray presents a more daunting task. You have to be willing to uncork your unconscious, at least if you want to make a good version. So far only Sisters of Mercy and Joy Division have tried, the Sisters of Mercy used it as a sort of milestone for each of their personell changes.

The VU play their tune hypnotic - an ugly trance. It's reputed to be the one recorded album song that approaches their marathon sessions playing for Warhol's strange parties. Here, Ana-Dorei have upped the droning hypnosis by straight playing dependable murder carnival and adding a monotony of strange happenings in a nearly hysterical babble. There's no intelligable moments - you're left to float adrift in fifteen minutes of screeching. Like answering a 911 call from a determined psychotic with a mouthful of ice.

Might be more fun than pathos with Erieza's light tone. But you're inevitably pushed into something deeper - it's a rhythmic trance, it's sex that is slowly losing its lubrication, it's grating and it feels good, until somehow the right spot gets hit and Ana-Dorei pushes it into sloppy overdrive. Erieza continues her pleasure-tortured warble, the guitars wheel around, the guest keyboardist twiddles faster than Ray Manzarek challenging Jim.

But we're still only partway through this song. After thirteen punk-sized bites, this is a major sonic committment. It threatens to become its own experience.

This is an ambitious song for a young band, and an appropriate send off for a fetish-band's first album. This is a song about transgression - men and women sucking cocks, shooting drugs, murder.

Pussy Cannibal Holocaust is distributed by Captain Trip Records.

I would end up accompanying Eriza to Department H, a sex performance club in Tokyo, in April 2002.