ATTENTION ALL JAPANESE WOMEN: NEVER GET NEAR RIVERS CUOMO

The Japanese are good at a variety of things; porn, professional eating, arbitrary censoring, developing video-games, getting stereotyped and participating in weird-ass gameshows. When it comes to music, they only seem to succeed in "visual kei" (Japanese scenesters trying too hard to revive bullshit glam-metal wankery), but then I found out about MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS, an awesome shoegaze trio (another thing about Japanese music: Bands are almost always referred to in ALL CAPS or all lowercase.) By the first track of their newest album, Zero Comma, Irotoridori no Sekai, I knew I was in for something. By the last track, I found my album of the year. As expected, the guitars are heavily distorted, but the drumming is fucking insane, and the (female) vocals are very J-popesque. If you've ever played a Katamari Damacy game (if you haven't, I suggest you do sometime soon), MotFD sounds like something from the soundtrack, only more serious. Not convinced yet? Track four (RAT) sounds like a goddamn boss battle from Megaman. ONE DAY is very dreamy, and will most likely make you feel lonely, even if you don't know what the fuck they're singing. Zero Comma, Irotoridori no Sekai is amazing overall, and there are about five other releases from MotFD, so there's plenty more where that came from.