Sammy Hagar told us that there's only one way to rock, but Yamatsuku Eye and his Boredoms weren't paying attention. After a lengthy career spent bashing randomly on whatever happened to be lying around the studio, and creating music as varied as it is incomprehensible, the Japanoise powerhouses have cast aside the haphazard experimentation and made one of the defining rock albums of the millennium. All the off- the- wall studio ideas and explosive chaos are here in spades, but they've been distilled into something approaching standard musical structure. As a result, the Boredoms have transformed the weary rock format into something commanding, shocking, beautiful and new.

After a brief, chiming synthesizer opening, the lead off track, "Super You," kicks in with a power chord heard 'round the world. It's clearly the big moment: a chord that launches a rock opera. An introduction to be remembered. Isn't it just like the perverse Boredoms to take this chord and play it repeatedly until it's nearly lost its power? Shaped via cassette, the crunching and impressive opening turns into a kind of sly joke as it passes the seven minute mark. The track is reminiscent of the Boredoms of old, but when heard as part of an entire album, it takes on a kind of quirky grandeur.

After the meandering opening, we're rewarded with the slashing "Super Are," which moves from a beautiful droning organ into a tight drum circle arrangement for conga and Japanese voice, and then slides, like something from Bob Geldoff's worst Pink Floyd nightmare, into a screaming, distorted guitar- and- vocal shriek. We're then offered a crude, balls- out groove straight out of a drug- addled Blue Cheer rehearsal, and it suddently becomes evident that this record must be listened to at maximum sound pressure levels. Volume is more essential to this record than any album in recent memory-- the startling dynamics lost much unless you push your stereo to its limit.

The profound need for dBs on Super Are becomes even more apparent with the scream that bridges the song with its successor, "Super Going." When the Who- inspired power chords of "Super Going" punch in, it's absolutely imperitive that your windows be rattling. Sure, the song doesn't change a hell of a lot over its twelve- plus minutes, but when you combine that heartbreaking rain- soaked guitar tone with the celebratory vocal interplay of Eye and the guys, the pressing question isn't when it will end, but why.

The track is followed by "Super Coming," a startling display of tranced- out caveman rock that consists of a single thundering riff pounded into rubble. Eye intones indecipherable lyrics like a man who had his larynx removed and barks through a hole in his chest. "Super Are You" is the most traditional song on the album, a goofy punk/ funk workout complete with cool sound effects. "Super Shine" follows, and immediately proves itself as one of the most intensely beautiful songs released in years. As instrument after instrument join in on the rousing chorus to chant home what has to be some kind of primordial "Come Together," and the band bashes the tribal beats that make it nigh impossible to sit down, it seems obvious that the Boredoms have stumbled onto something genuinely profound.

That "Super Good" is a comparatively tame synth and sound wind- down makes perfect sense-- it's a nice gentle end to a powerful trip. And in the end, Super Are is indeed super good, super beautiful, super hard, super weird, super intense, super funny and super alive.

-Mark Richard-San