Guitar Wolf

Playing a sui generis brand of Ramones-inspired garage-punk at ear-splitting volumes, Japan’s Guitar Wolf made several classic lo-fi albums for Matador Records in the mid-1990s. Although they’ve been together since ‘87, and continue to perform and record (for Sony in Japan and for Narnack Records in the U.S.), it is their mid-‘90s work which endeared them most to American listeners. In ’05, the band lost their bass player to a fatal heart attack, but they have soldiered on.