FOR THE third time in the space of just over 18 months - and we should feel privileged by this - Japan’s Acid Mothers Temple play the Róisín Dubh on this Tuesday at 9pm.
As with their previous shows, it promises to be no ordinary gig. It will be a sonic journey to the outer limits of heavy metal, psychedelia, and avant garde - and beyond...
After paying his dues in various bands, fleet-fingered guitarist Makoto Kawabata formed AMT in 1995, gathering together a core of people who shared his enthusiasm for heavy metal, prog rock, Krautrock, psychedelia, and Karlheinz Stockhausen.
For Kawabata though, AMT are not just another band, they are a philosophy, and a way of life.
“Acid Mothers Temple is a place of refuge,” he says, “a hometown for all those excluded by mainstream society who find some resonance in our slogan ‘Do Whatever you want. Don’t do what you don’t want!’ I have never seen Acid Mothers Temple as the collective name for any particular unit or group. Rather it is a description of the souls of all those who have gathered together under our slogan, and it is an attitude to life.”
AMT tours as the psychedelic freakout band Acid Mother’s Temple & The Melting Paradise UFO and as the darker, more metal Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno.
“In everything there are two opposing forces, a Yin and a Yang,” he says. “It was utterly fitting for this is truly a battle between heaven and hell, between The Melting Paradise UFO and The Cosmic Inferno.”
Through The Cosmic Inferno, Kawabata was able to explore his love of heavy metal. The Cosmic Inferno approach is best heard on 2006’s Starless & Bible Black Sabbath, a nod to their heroes Black Sabbath and King Crimson, and a compelling monolith of left field metal.
At the band’s Róisín Dubh show, there is a good chance time they will perform marvellous a cappella vocal harmonies which draw on traditional Japanese, Irish, and English chants.
This side of the band was explored on 2007’s Nam Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo. The title is the central chant of Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism, a distinctly Japanese form of the religion. The band begin the chant and over the course of an hour, build it and the accompanying music in intensity until it explores into a hallucinatory freakout.
Tickets are available from the Róisín Dubh, Zhivago, and Redlight Records.
