No not Pink Floyd's The Wall or Yes's Tales from Topographic Oceans but concept rock with 500 foot tall monsters being battled by an elusive group of brave superheroes called Daikaiju (pronounced DIE-kai-joo). Kaiju and specifically Daikaiju means giant monster and "godlike" giant monster respectively. The terms originate from the Japanese film genre where Godzilla and Power Rangers emerged from. Very appropriately too because the members of the band have discarded their actual identities and are known as Secret-man (guitar), Rock-man (guitar), Hands-man (drums) and Rumble-man (bass).
Self-described as a band that "creates divine psychic wind for your special defense!" the group is known for their national tours and transcendent live performances. Their sound comes from the best of surf and garage is like seeing to a Man Or Astroman? show with Dick Dale playing lead. Very little of the bands origins or current base of operations is known at this time.
References:
- Official Site, Daikaiju
- Facebook, Daikaiju
- Bandcamp, Monsters Of Surf
In 1981, the band self-released the self-titled "Sonic Youth" album made up of five tracks recorded in New York's Radio City Music Hall and later released with nine more tracks recorded directly from soundboards at shows in the NYC area.
In 1983, the group settled into an low tech, improvised sound studio in the basement of a Chelsea building to record "Confusion Is Sex". This album was engineered by Wharton Tiers who would later go on to engineer and produce albums by Helmet, Dinosaur Jr and White Zombie.
In 1985, the trio of Moore/Gordon/Renaldo, who had a great deal of trouble with keeping drummers recruited Steve Shelley. Shelley who would remain with the band until 2011. 1985's "Bad Moon Rising", Sonic Youth's second album, dealt with dark side of America, obsession and insanity, Charles Manson, heavy metal, Satanism and lurking subculture. 
Sonic Youth's third album "EVOL" was released the following year from SST Records by founder and founding member of Black Flag, Greg Ginn, in 1986. This record show a larger role for Kim Gordon and her point of view. And, let's face it: punk is largely a male dominated genre without much space left over for women as anything other than brutalized sex objects. Tell me I'm wrong even today. I imagine that this prevailing chauvinist and superior attitude pissed off Kim Gordon and Lydia Lunch, both talented musicians and writers who had earned their places in the punk scene, quite a bit. Some of this frustration spilled over in this album's cover art and began to be more apparent in the lyrics and edgy instrumentals like "Death to Our Friends". "EVOL" featured stand-out tracks that would become classic Sonic Youth songs such as "Tom Violence" which breaks from raging guitar chords long enough to announce "My violence is the number, Coming out of prayer" and the building eruption that is 
Next came the landmark album "Sister" in '87. If the band had previously taken their audience through personal chaos, psychic disturbance and euphoric transcendence - all musically - then "Sister" would carve out a seemingly physical place where all of these factors could meet and be combined into a unique force. "Schizophrenia", the opening track begins impossibly simply. A lone drum eventually joined by a simple guitar melody. Moore's velvety voice approaches us from a halting distance to announce "Jesus had a twin who knew nothing about sin." before the tempo violently shifts, as if simulating a psychotic break, and the guitars shred every bit of the carefully constructed serenity that had came before.
In 1988, as punk was settling into it's grave and grunge wasn't even on the horizon, Sonic Youth released it's fifth album, Daydream Nation, as a double album. It included the key tracks "Teenage Riot" and the fiery "Silver Rocket". With this record the band was finally breaking through to both critical and popular success. "Daydream Nation" made it to number 99 on the 
"Goo" was the sixth studio album released on June 26th 1990, through record label DGC. The album was Sonic Youth's debut release on a major record label. The band signed to Geffen Records for $300,000 following the success of Daydream Nation. The cover art is right out of a Roy Lichtenstein painting but features a beatnik couple and features the captions: "I stole my sisters boyfriend. It was all whirlwind, heat, flash. Within a week we killed my parents and hit the road." The album features Kim Gordon's unique mix of sexy righteousness with a larger emphasis on her bass work and writing. Sonic Youth toured Europe and North America twice in 1990 following the mainstream breakthrough of alternative rock and grunge, the band toured Europe again in fall 1991 with Nirvana and Dinosaur Jr. The latter tour was chronicled on the documentary 1991: The Year Punk Broke, directed by Dave Markey. Once again, there were multiple key tracks starting, much like 1987's Schizophrenia did, with "Dirty Boots" in a slow boil quickly followed by "Mary-Christ", "Kool Thing" with Chuck D being cross-examined by Kim Gordon on women's rights, stand-out track "Mote" and the break through track "My Friend Goo".
"Dirty", released in July of 1992, was the band's seventh studio album and was released by DGC and produced by Butch Vig who had also produced The Smashing Pumpkins' Gish and Nirvana's Nevermind in 1991. Vig and Sonic Youth began a collaboration with Dirty that produced key tracks such as the sweat-drenched and hyper-sexualized "100%", "Wish Fulfillment" once again separated into the beautiful/ugly and serene/enraged paradigm by Ranaldo, "Sugar Kane" and "Youth Against Facism". The band also mixed in sound collage influenced demos they had previously recorded that became tracks like "Theresa's Sound World" and "Swimsuit Issue" as well as a cover of the Untouchables' one minute rager "Nic Fit". The album tracked in the musical charts in Sweden, Germany, Australia, England and made it to #83 on the US Billboard 200. Four singles, "100%", "Youth Against Fascism", "Sugar Kane" and "Drunken Butterfly" were released from 1993-94. 
Their next album, Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, released 1994, was also a collaboration with Butch Vig. At this time Sonic Youth has traveled the world several times over. The original creative spark that was ignited in punk dives, crumbling art galleries and new romances that had been burning bright for 12 years began to fade. This album showcases much less of the innovation and energy that appeared on "Sister" or "EVOL" in as heard in acoustic tracks like "Winner's Blues" yet still has several important tracks such as "Bull in the Heather", the experimental "Starfield Road" with Moore warning "Jesus is screaming your name!", Kim Gordon taking us "down to the bottom" with her near solo performance of "Skink" and returning to proper form with "Screaming Skull". In 1994, the "Bull in the Heather" single made it to #13 on the US Modern Rock Tracks Chart and and #24 on the UK Singles Chart. The album was their most commercially successful and reached #34 on the US Billboard 200 and even tracked up to #34 in New Zealand. 
Sonic Youth's ninth album, and the final one we will look at it in the 1981-1995 period, is "Washing Machine" from 1995. Washing Machine was released when music had seen unknown niche and practically unknown genre bands like Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Sound Garden, Dinosaur Jr. and Jane's Addiction rise to super stardom. After headlining the 1995 Lollapalooza music festival Sonic Youth recorded more stand-out material including "Becuz" and "Junkie's Promise" that opens with the cynical screed: "$100 dollars used to be more than enough, And now 100 times a day isn't enough." seemingly alluding to prostitution and heroin that is epidemic in NYC and the metropolises that the band constantly toured through. Kim Gordon has her own Diamond Sea epic in the eponymous 10 minute track "Washing Machine" that once again is laid out in classically arranged sections within one song. She also addresses female identity issues and attitudes surrounding her own sexuality in the surprising and Motown influenced "Little Trouble Girl". Gordon and Moore also further experiment with song structure with "No Queen Blues". Six more albums were released by the band from 1998 to 2009 including A Thousand Leaves (1998), NYC Ghosts & Flowers (2000), Murray Street (2002), Sonic Nurse (2004), Rather Ripped (2006) and The Eternal (2009). The band broke up in October of 2011 when founding members Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon divorced after 30 years of marriage and a long and unprecedented career in music. 
Alex Ebert and Jade Castrinos lead a group of ensemble musicians with roots in new American literature, social consciousness, 1960's communal culture and believe it or not the late 90's electronic rock scene in LA as Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes.
Finland's The Mutants are an impressive ensemble band, currently made up of six performers, who fit into a rare category of instrumental music that only a handful of other acts, such as Man Or Astro Man, Goblin and Kreftwerk, have managed to create for themselves.
There many descriptions of southern California's The Growlers. They enjoy a large audience on national college radio which, God bless it, calls the group everything from folk to psyche rock. The truth seems to be that they incorporate everything in between these two musical polar opposites and make these influences into their own sound.
Tom Waits is musical institution in America representative of the darker side of entertainment. Waits spiritual roots in pre-rock rock, circus sideshows and vaudeville have been wildly and asymmetrically re-arranged by his own experience with rejection as a man and performer, personal loss and bleak cycles of addiction.
Originally slated to be Modest Mouse's debut album, "Sad Sappy Sucker" was shelved for several years until it's eventual release in 2001. This came after the popularity of smash hit album The Moon & Antarctica (3rd Planet, I Came as a Rat, Lives Like Weeds) released in June of 2000. The Moon & Antarctica dwarfed the group's early work on The Lonesome Crowded West (Polar Opposites) released in 1997 and Build Nothing Out Of Something (Never Ending Math Equation) a compilation album of work recorded from 1996 to 1998 that was released in early 2000.
Anton Newcombe is the leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre founded in the early 1990s in San Francisco. The band's name "The Brian Jonestown Massacre" is a mash-up of The Rolling Stones' founder and guitarist Brian Jones and the infamous mass cult suicide in Jonestown, Guyana led by Jim Jones in the late 1970's. Combining the two seemingly similar but polar opposite terms reflects a cruel contradiction in American popular culture.
Death In Vegas, a psychedelic/electronic duo based in the U.K., are a group that broke right before the Millennium in the US. Their success came in the middle of a mostly tired electronic scene that was busy making hyper elevator music and gleefully worshiping acts like Moby. Like disco in the 1970's it was mostly the drugs driving the scene and not the music itself.
The title track from Mellow Gold, recorded in 1991 by Bongload Custom Recordings in L.A., introduced the world to Beck Hansen two years later in 1993. An infectious slide guitar driven melody, the single's chorus of "I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me," became unavoidable. Beck released Mellow Gold (1994), his Geffen/DGC Records debut, in early 1994 to critical acclaim. The album included the aforementioned single as well as the live staple "Beercan", and showcased Beck's love of all things musical. Elements of folk, punk, blues, noise and hip-hop informed the varied sounds on the album. He also released two independent albums during this period including the melancholy, folk-tinged One Foot In The Grave (K Records) (1994).
A Mind is A Terrible Thing To Taste
In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up
