Smashed walls and Molotov cocktails: When a Japanese noise band destroyed a venue with an excavator
Some rock bands may smash up their instruments, others might invite a chaotic stage invasion. In Hanatarash’s case, they thought they’d jolt the audience out of their complacency by smashing an excavator into the venue wall.
Extremity on all fronts was the sole agenda of Yamantaka Eye. Later to find cult fame orchestrating Boredoms’ psychedelic racket in 1986, the Japanese punk performance artist met fellow Hanatarash founder Mitsuru Tabata while working as a stagehand for German industrial ensemble Einstürzende Neubauten.
It would provide valuable work experience. As well as soaking up the noise blasts of Merzbow and GISM’s chainsaw-wielding violence in Tokyo, Einstürzende Neubauten’s on-stage arsenal of scrapyard instrumentation would offer just the danger Eye and Mitsuru were seeking in a punk underground they felt had grown too polished and comfortable.
Conjuring blistering engulfs of sonic terrorism via the wield of power tools and drills, Hanatarash were eager to push the emerging Japanoise underground to its outer limits. Eye knew they needed a live act that would match the volatility captured on their prized cassette tapes like Honey Go-Go, Take Back Your Penis!, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre!!, and so resurrected some of the ‘danger music’ philosophy of Takehisa Kosugi’s eyeball-ripping conceptual works and the severed cow heads paraded by South Korean multi-media artist Nam June Paik.
Before long, their aural attacks would involve anything from showering the audience in broken glass and metal, cutting a dead cat in half with a machete, and strapping a whirring circular saw to his back with such reckless abandon that he nearly cut his own leg off. Naturally, such antics drew in Tokyo’s intrepid music fans, and anybody who just wanted to gawp in morbid fascination, shrouded in extra notoriety by the waivers ticket holders were forced to sign before witnessing Hanatarash wanton hazardnouss.
It was clear that Eye didn’t hold the faintest regard for health and safety, yet, on the evening of August 4th, 1985, Hanatarash would pull off their most explosive stunt they’d never top.
While the Super Loft venue must have been aware of their reputation among the Tokyo punk subculture, nothing could have prepared the owners and staff for Eye genuinely smashing through the front doors, manning a giant excavator. Spinning the vehicle in 360s and chasing the terrified crowd, the heavy digger smashed another hole in the wall, exposing the outside elements, before lifting up the shovel and tipping over the construction unit.
Eye wasn’t done there, however. The upturned vehicle began leaking gasoline, at which point the Hanatarash vandal brandished a ready-made Molotov cocktail, promoting a panicked audience to rush him and subdue the frontman before burning the entire Super Loft to the ground. For his antics, Eye was slapped with several months in prison, a near virtual ban across the city enforced by promoters and local authorities alike, and an order to cough up the damages.
“Nobody got hurt there, but it cost us several thousand bucks to pay for all the damage,” Eye once recalled. Hanatarash would reconvene and drop some releases around his Boredoms day job and the plethora of side-projects he keeps himself busy with, but Tokyo’s most extreme band could only ever pale in comparison to the legend they had created, the Super Loft destruction towering over their output before dissolving for good in 1998.
