The band Dave Grohl thought made the most intense music: “It’ll blow your mind”
Some of the greatest rock and roll ever made is based on the energy that the band creates. No one needs to be the most talented instrumentalist in the world, but if the final take sounds like everything’s about to explode, it’s much more exciting than hearing people do scale exercises for the length of one song. Dave Grohl managed to be one of the few who mastered both the finesse and intensity of rock, but from a raw energy perspective, nothing got close to what Otoboke Beaver is doing.
Then again, it was going to have to take something more than just a straight-ahead punk outfit to really impress Grohl. He had been entrenched in the hardcore Washington, DC scene that birthed acts like Bad Brains and Minor Threat, so he knew what it took to make something much heavier than anyone else had covered.
On the other side of the world, punk rock sounded even heavier on Japanese shores, and Otoboke Beaver took the entire genre to new heights. As opposed to playing the typical flavours of punk that are more prevalent nowadays, this is the sound of rock music that feels like a sugar high from the moment that it starts, with half of their songs barely lasting a minute.
Given how much stamina it takes to get through every tune, a minute is probably all anyone could play before the body shuts down from pure exhaustion. Listening to drummer Kahokiss on record is already a trip, but seeing her play insane blast beats for over a minute feels like the equivalent of lightspeed for human hands.
While Grohl had a John Bonham-esque approach to the drums, he knew he was listening to one of the greatest punk acts of the modern era. When talking to Vulture, Grohl thought that they were one of the fiercest bands flying the flag for punk today, saying, “The Japanese punk-rock band Otoboke Beaver. Watch this video for a song called ‘Don’t Light My Fire’. It’ll blow your mind, dude. It’s the most fucking intense shit you’ve ever seen.”
That’s not to say that Grohl hasn’t had his fair share of intense moments himself. Throughout the majority of his time in Scream, a lot of his most famous moments involved him playing some of the most chaotic drum rolls of all time before he got the call to jam with Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic for Nirvana.
Grohl eventually learned how to play to the song instead of just exhausting himself, but the whole point behind Otoboke Beaver is to make the most exhausting music ever made. The tunes may leave you on your ass if you’re not ready, but just like going on a rollercoaster, most people will want right back on after being thrown around for the first time.
If anything, a group like Otoboke Beaver just speaks to what Grohl was all about when he started out. No one has to spend time writing the next song to compete with The Beatles, so sometimes it’s more fun to just step up to the microphone with a heart full of adrenaline and see what comes out of it.
