Maintaining a cult status for the better part of four distinct decades is a pretty phenomenal feat. It’s not that it hasn’t been done countless times in the States and abroad. But a Japanese band called Les Rallizes Denudes ratchets up the weirdness to hitherto untold heights.

Founded in ’67 and making its live debut early the following year, Les Rallizes Denudes, centered around Mizutani Takashi, sought to incorporate as many different modes of expression into performances as possible. There were films, lights, disco balls and the like all functioning alongside the rock-steady drum beat and repetitive bass lines that comprise such a dense block of the group’s catalog.

All of this set against scatter shot distortion and growled vocals only hint at the lives of band members outside of their time spent practicing. The music was just short of revolutionary at the time that the band first recorded, but the endeavors that individuals were tied to seem just short of terrorism at this point. One time member Wakabayashi went so far as to high jack a plane while a member of the Japanese Red Army. Of course, other players in the group were involved in protests and the like, but nothing so radical.

Regardless of its political bent – which actually makes the MC5 and John Sinclair look like a sewers circle - Les Rallizes Denudes were an apt representation of ‘60s rock music. The band, while still trafficking in noisome roughness, were able to tie in some bubble gum tendencies even if the group’s guitarist was intent on destroying any semblance of normal melody.

“The Night of Assassin,” from Field of Artificial Flower, maintains its persistent bump and swing tied to ‘60s beat combos even while the song’s various guitar solos end up sounding like the dismantling of a dishwasher. There’s no accounting for taste, but the fact that Les Rallizes Denudes has been able to remain a functional unit for so long is pretty astounding – and the fact that the ensemble still has a sizable international following is just short of miraculous.

Spreading its recordings out over it’s forty plus year existence, there’s no shortage of material for fans to track down. But just in the same way that “The Night of Assassin” represents a substantial dialing down of the group’s freak outs, Caress & Violence is almost evenly split between faced paced psych jams overwhelmed by distortion and what come off as ballads by comparison.

There’re easily too many releases bearing the group’s name to surmise which disc works best, but considering the fact that in almost every write up of Les Rallizes Denudes there’s a mention of the Velvet Underground, it’s pretty safe to guess what segment of the American populace is going to be enthralled by the spate of noise, fuzz and freeq jams.

Last performing a few years back, the band was recently featured in Julian Cope’s JapRockSampler. The name check certainly won’t make the band a mint, but may provide an expanded base of ear holes for the band to hock its wares.