Photo by Michael Raymond Clarke

On Monday night, fans saw the long-awaited return of Japanese harsh noise legend Masami Akita to Toronto. Akita, better known as Merzbow, was playing the city for the first time in just under nine years. For the past month, it’s been impossible to eavesdrop on a flock of extreme metal heads/noise fans without hearing an utterance of this “second coming.”

If you’re unfamiliar with Akita’s thirty-plus years of work, now would be a good time to bring you up to speed. Merzbow performs at the most intense volumes imaginable. He has hundreds of releases, which are generally characterized by primordial, bowel-churning bass waves, piercing treble blasts, and plenty of meter-riding feedback. This is not music. It’s noise, of the harshest persuasion, and it exists to physically disorient the listener.

Since Akita’s performances are typically improvised, I had no idea what to expect in terms of his technical setup. When I arrived at the venue, complete with a last-minute pair of convenience store ear plugs, I was sure of only one thing: this was not the Horseshoe I knew. There were no cool indie bands, and nobody was there to party. Instead, the houselights were all but extinguished. A clump of the audience sat in bar chairs, obscured by blackness, while a handful of enthusiasts crowded the stage to guarantee their spots for the rest of the night. A good portion of people were visibly alone.

By quarter to ten, local doom/drone metal outfit Gates took the stage, performing a live rendition of their album “Moths Have Eaten the Core.” With three low-tuned guitars, electrical hums, and nightmarish spurts of delay-soaked screams, Gates had no problem setting the ‘tone’ for the evening. At first, there were some gaps in the audience, but by the end of their rumbling half-hour set, the ‘shoe had filled up nicely.

As more bodies amassed, Merzbow’s gear was unveiled. His set had not begun, but in a way his performance had. Superfans stood on their tippy toes to catch a glimpse of the spread, and I was no exception. On a table, there sat one laptop sporting a “meat is murder” sticker, as well as a small mixer spewing cables, and two jacked-up stomp-boxes (presumably tone generators). Naturally, the floor was covered in pedals. Behind it all, there stood a fridge sized bass stack, and one very loud looking guitar amp.

At around ten thirty, Akita finally walked out, clad in black. He wore a pair of dark sun glasses, and an expressionless face. Immediately, the maestro sat down behind his table of knobs to produce a few wet sounding blips. “He’s doing a quick line check,” I thought.

Wrong!

A wash of thick static flooded the air. Akita had started, without so much as a “hello.” These opening sounds smacked of white noise, but nothing was truly offensive. The spikes weren’t deafening, and the treble wasn’t sharp enough to make it the main course. But within minutes, the artist unleashed a wall of bass so low I laughed out loud. I could feel the frequencies in my legs, which I noticed were trembling.

Then the real feast began. Akita stood up to bust out one of his homemade “junk” instruments. Worn like a guitar, this tool was comprised of a tambourine, and what sounded like reverb springs. He “strummed” it with something that looked like a mutilated loudspeaker mic. This produced a blizzard-like swirl of feedback that stuck around for the rest of the performance. During a brief lull, one guy cheered only to be blasted out of audibility by a mess of overdriven dial-up-internet signals. At certain points, the artist had several audience members nodding their heads to low frequency rhythms that formed a nauseating pulse. These waves were intense enough to make one onlooker’s video camera glitch out – but actually.

In a final swell of feedback, Merzbow made the noise disappear. His challenging performance was over. For many, it was all too soon. Wiping himself down, a silent Masami Akita humbly left the stage to thunderous applause. For another twenty minutes, a small herd crowded the stage, as if Merzbow were still playing in their damaged ears. One guy went so far as to swipe a used Kleenex from Akita’s table of equipment. This was a little much, even for a devout lover of the genre.

Still, it was all out of love. The set had temporarily unified metal heads, art punks, rave ware kids, and prog dads. I was more than fine with that. Since there are so many Merzbow releases, it’s hard to lump this improvised piece in with just one record. If I had to reference something, it would be the 1996 release “Pulse Demon,” which showcases similar spiralling, washy tones.

Of course, it’s useless to get too caught up in comparisons. What counts is that Merzbow gave his dedicated fans everything they were expecting. I can only hope we see him again before 2020.