(content stolen from the official EES website, check it out)

 

Spooky021

Electric Eel Shock - 'Beat Me'

Reviews

The Age - EG

Japan's Electric Eel Shock deliver their most impressive slab of rawk yet.

On their raucous second full-length LP, Japanese Black Sabbath tragics Electric Eel Shock amp up the psychedelic riffage to deliver their most impressive slab of rawk yet. Beat Me, the follow-up to 2004's Go Europe, is an exercise in fan-worship, wallowing in Motorhead/Zeppelin/Ozzy heaven with minimal artistic pretence.

The three-piece's unbridled enthusiasm ensures songs such as Don't Say F--- and I Can Hear the Sex Noise don't seem half as ridiculous as the lyrics suggest. As Melbourne fans lucky enough to catch the trio last month would know, drummer Tomoharu "Gian" Ito is equally adept at driving beats and swaggering cool, and his interplay with frontman/guitar-god Aki Morimoto is invigorating. Morimoto's guitar tone is the warmest this side of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, his vocals whisky-sharp.

The band are at their best when the two merge, as on barnstorming single Scream for Me - or the made-for-air-guitar title track. Some of it is over-the-top but you can't fault a band that can add something to Sabbath's classic Iron Man. "Rock'n'roll kills the blues", the band proclaims; and on this long-player it does.

Matt Joyce

 

Citysearch - Australia

Only a Japanese trio like stoner maniacs Electric Eel Shock could finish an album with a funky sped up cover of Black Sabbath's sludge rock classic Iron Man and get away with it. Just. See, across their career the band have concocted a particularly trundling version of classic heavy metal, with little more than a guitar, bass, drums and rudimentary English (incidentally, language skills akin to what Ozzy has been working with for years).

Of course, Japan churns out stylised versions of Western music, this much we know. But the sheer unbridled passion for chugging hard rock is difficult to deny and Electric Eel Shock have assembled a dossier on how to unite the grooves of hopping garage punk and of loping stoner rock in Beat Me. It rarely departs from death-defyingly simple riff action and the occasionally hilarious chorus proclamations (eg. "I can hear that sex noise!" and the exchanged Japanese verses in the title track).

Electric Eel Shock certainly do have the chops to be more than just a novelty, and a sense of fun pervades the album far more than most boppy, stoner albums because it's much cheekier. And word is, they're a spectacular live act (not least because their drummer plays wearing nothing but a strategically placed sock a la early RHCP). That's understandable, since even on plastic it's a hard rock party.

 Andrew Tijs

 

Beat Magazine - Melbourne

Electric Eel Shock’s adherence to the rigid fundamentals of the big rock sound personified by Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple makes Wolfmother seem like a bunch of kids doing karaoke on a Sunday afternoon. This is a group that knows every single power chord played in the Hammersmith Odeon, every grimacing facial expression witnessed on Ritchie Blackmore’s face, every sneering sexist advance mouthed by Ozzy Osborne.

Beat Me is the Electric Eel Shock’s first local release. It’s the stuff of guitar based metal heroes – head banging blues rock chords underwritten by the Link Wray Foundation for Heavy Guitar, guitar solos so white hot you could go blind just thinking about them and lyrics drawn from the classically narrow subject matter of sex (I Can Hear the Sex Noise), metaphorical violence (Killer Killer), pace (Slow Down), heavy metal philosophy (Rock’n’Roll Kills the Blues) and fishing (I Love Fish But the Fish Hate Me).

From the moment Gian’s skipping drum beat ushers in the opening track, Scream for Me ("scream for me baby, I have the answer") you know you’re in classic territory. Akihoto Morimoto’s vocals threaten and soothe in concert with the driving metal blues chords thrashed out of his guitar before the shriek of his lead break fills the air like the sound of shattering fine crystal.

Yet for all its manic guitar hero bravado and supra-pronto tempo, one of the things that’s most endearing about Electric Eel Shock is its ability to swing between moments of restraint and metallic explosion. Slow Down starts at the frenetic pace you’d expect a song of that title to, before easing into a moseying pop rock interlude that seems simultaneously in and out of place, while Lemon Lees threatens to fill assume the role of the quiet album track ballad, until the psyched-in guitar implodes in the face of an attack sponsored equally by Hendrix and Blackmore. And in case you weren’t quite sure who was at the root of Electric Eel Shock’s genealogical tree, the album finishes with a faithful cover of the classic Sabbath bruiser Iron Man.

The art of good rock’n’roll is to create the maximum artistic statement with the minimum of ingredients. Electric Eel Shock do that and more. This is an album crying out to be thrashed out with the amps on 11.

PATRICK EMERY

 

"When Electric Eel Shock burst onto the scene two years ago it was a breath of fresh air... BEAT ME finally captures on CD their glorious mash of stoner grooves, AC/DC and Judas Preist. Double the effort. Double the racket. Double peace baby, double peace!"
Metal Hammer - John Dornan

"Electric Eel Shock are gonzoid mentalists of the highest degree... BEAT ME sounds like Fu Manchu twatting Jet for stealing all the cheap whiz. Pop-tinged sludge-metal-garage-punk."
Kerrang!

"Electric Eel Shock are totally commited to the rock they love so much... New album BEAT ME is a roller coaster rocking ride through the world of EES... the result of a lifetime spent in thrall of all that is Black Sabbath... the sound of true hard, tight, rock."
Artrocker Magazine

"It is their fleet-footed, unpredictable and dubious compositions that makes Electric Eel Shock so special... their swing version of "Iron Man" is yet one of the cheekiest as well as one of the greatest Black Sabbath cover versions of all time. "
Rock Hard Magazine (Germanay)

"The biggest balls and bravado at Download festival."
Kerrang!

"Crossing more genres than you would have thought possible on an album, Electric Eel Shock hitch a full throttle ride via stoner rock and metal to punk'n'roll and back again. Beat Me is unadulterated fun. Stomping beats, unhinged riffs and vicious vocals are all entwined, climaxing with their very own amphetamine-fueld cover of Black Sabbath's Iron Man."
Big Issue

"EES more than successfully capture their on stage passion on this latest album. Kicking off with a superbike roar they punch their way through a gripping installment of phenomenal high octane rock."
Independent

"BEAT ME is the party album for the summer..."
Artrocker Magazine

"Teeth-shatteringly heavy, single minded and way beyond over the top, EES rock!"
The Fly

"Electric Eel Shock may not be trading in the most fashionable of styles at the moment. They may not even be delivering the most fashionable style of rock but BEAT ME delivers a pure lesson in rock: duelling guitars, pounding drums and one of those endings Iron Maiden do nefore shouting Thank You Good Night."
musicOMH.com

"Born of a thousand Western rock/metal influences Electric Eel Shock pay homage to the greats with twelve guitar heavy rock tracks. If you want some good old fashioned fun with some classic rock/metal riffs, stick this CD on, crack open a bottle of ice cold saki, and crank it up on the air guitar."
gigwise.com

Electric Eel Shock's ethos is firmly rooted in Donnington Park in 1981, Iron Maiden, Saxon, Black Sabbath and the Ramones all vere for pole position on the turntable... Unrepentant aural pleasure for differing reasons - king sized behemoth of noise pollution like Slayer in rehersal and pop-punk blues tha makes the White Stripes sound like Keane."
drownedinsound.com

"After years of touring Beat Me could give Electric Eel Shock the international breakthrough they deserve... the album echoes everyone from Alice Cooper and Motorhead to Hendrix and Rainbow full of sledgehammer riffs and more expletives than a Quentin Tarantino movie"
Lincolnshire Chronical

"Any two-bit stoner rock band can name a song Bastard! but maybe only EES can make it so catchy that you'll unwittingly sing it to yourself in odd moments andall your friends will think you have developed Tourette's."
new-noise.net

"Stomping beats with a rock-solid groove underpin some fine old school rock riffing. The band even takes on Black Sabbath and improves it with a speeded and slightly funked up version of Iron Man. Brilliant,"
Middlesborough Evening Gazette

"Electric Eel Shock take all the magic and frenzied genius of artists like MC5, Jimi Hendrix and AC/DC and mix it all into a wonderful chaotic paste that spreads over your body so that it can manipulate you. From the opener Scream For Me to the closing Black Sabbath cover Iron Man Beat Me is an incredible energetic and delightfully hectic ride. Don't miss out on this disorder... get beaten."
nofrontteeth.co.uk

"Electric Eel Shock Beat Me is a wide mouthed scream of child-like pleasure and insanity that just cries out to be loved."
Soundsxp.com