By Don Baird Published: March 3, 2005 SF Bay Times
The Electric Eel Shock boys are a rowdy bunch. I caught a show a couple weeks back at Bottom of the Hill that was so incredibly good, I wandered home afterwards thinking that if every rock show was just half as good as that I would be ecstatic all the time. If every band brought such boundless enthusiasm, frenetic energy, pure showmanship and unbridled love of rock and roll and screaming guitar heroics to the stage like Electric Eel Shock did that night, to a half-capacity house no less, the world would be a better place. The Japanese power trio certainly put a spring in my step all the way home and then some, and it really got me thinking about what it was that this band did that set them apart—what were the fundamental differences between them and a handful of bands I’ve seen lately whose live shows paled in comparison? 
I first heard of Electric Eel Shock from MTV’s You Hear It First, a music/news segment that profiles a new band or artist on the verge breaking big. I believe I had seen two artists profiled previously, something wanky like My Chemical Romance and Fefe Dobson and then this odd Japanese band. I gathered from the segment that they had caused quite a stir with an appearance at South by SouthWest—the Austin, Texas music conference—and the accompanying footage was low quality, but I could see that these three guys were chaotic and unhinged, hyperactive and intense, but I wasn’t getting a very clear listen to their music. The rest of the segment was a short interview with the three members who speak very little English (but sing lots of it) and tried to explain that they divide their time in the day between making rock and roll and fishing. I liked that. Shortly after that I saw they were playing a night at Kimos on Polk Street, and so I went to catch them but they had already played their set when I arrived so I had to be satisfied with purchasing their CD, Go America! from two Japanese girls at their merchandise table. I brought it home quickly and found it was enhanced and included some live footage and a music video, and I was totally spellbound with the music. This was some hard shit. Punk rock fury, glam touches all over, and thunderously precise heavy metal riffs release and collide into catchy songs—yet the usual angst, evil and darkness inherent to those styles seems to have vaporized into an effervescent, unfettered kind of fun that courses through this disc like a fat balloon full of whippets to your brain. Yeah, it’s that good and it is inexplicably rock and roll, alive and well and living in Japan. So I immediately started singing the praises of Electric Eel Shock to friends here and there and playing them liberally in my DJ sets, only to learn that a lot of people were already hip to them and had even witnessed the magic live and were bonafide fans of this incredible Japanese band. EES apparently spend a great deal of time touring the states and Europe regularly, winning fans everywhere they play with their trademark over-the-top live sets, which draw comparisons to the Stooges and other seminal Detroit garage-band era staples. They clearly love American culture, music and movies. They claim to be somewhat unknown in Japan. I was thrilled when I saw they were coming through town again and I vowed I wouldn’t miss them this time. I arrived to the club just as they were going on and I was shocked that the place wasn’t even half full. The crowd was definitely in-the-know and very attentive, seeming familiar with the songs, informed grins that kind of said, “Yeah, we’re here and totally knowing that this band is the shit!” This stance quickly gave way to infectious head-banging, dancing and bigger smiles as the band dug into their set with a deranged fervor—delivering exact renditions of the songs from their record, note for note. Then they’d give it a more improvised turbo-charged maniac solo treatment midway through, and each time they tricked it up like that. It was like the guitarist became a surgeon, methodically peeling back a layer of your brain or performing some form of trepanation (putting a hole in your skull) to produce a euphoric state—all done by micro sonic guitar surgery to maximize your pleasure. This band took you places. And while they did so, they appeared to be expending more energy and throwing every ounce of their physical beings into their performance. This truly is an amazing thing to behold, and when considering what it is that set this show apart from many others, that aspect is key. I love it when a band just explodes into motion; bodies whip so hard guitars bounce off of them, bending back from the knees till their back hits the floor, jumping up on the monitors with guitars held over head, manipulating squeals of feedback from the guitar, playing with it held behind the head, turning the guitar neckside down and pretending it’s a jackhammer, attacking it with karate chops and just pounding and jerking the riffs out with emphasis and passion and moving all over the stage as opposed to staying in a designated place. Even the drummer was his own kind of Wildman—adding to the vocals occasionally, hitting things so hard cymbals were falling, at times drumming with two sticks in each hand. I hear he can swallow drumsticks too. They seemed especially proud of the drummer, drawing attention to him after almost every song. They played out a brilliant final song and left the stage only to return quickly with definitely the best version of Sabbaths’ “Iron Man” I have ever heard, arranged to alternate between two different speeds. They continued with three more songs and during the elongated, dramatic, feedback pulsing conclusion, the bass player pushed his instrument to his side and ran up the side wall of the stage and flipped back to a standing position in that Kill Bill/ Crouching Tiger, Hidden Motherfucker style of impossible martial acrobatics. It was completely cinematic and magical—I was speechless. This band kicked out a performance of unyielding power like their entire lives depended on it. You just don’t see much of that at a Postal Service show, now do you? No one in the Polyphonic Spree ever gets fully airborne either I bet