Droog: Monochrome – punk rock, new mini album and major re-debut!

Droog, formed by four childhood friends from Oita Prefecture’s Beppu city has a new mini album out this week and it is their return to the world of major labels. Back in 2010 they released two mini albums independently before signing to Avex, where they released yet another mini, the totally amazing Love Songs and followed that up with two full albums. While their early output was a never ending adrenaline rush of insanely raw garage rock, for the full albums they started to change direction a bit and shifted towards a more classic punk rock sound. And while those were still fine releases, most of the tracks lacked the rough-as-fuck edge of their earlier works. They left Avex, released a single on some other label and then two years of silence followed with no new material… until this August, when they finally dropped a new album. It was released independently again, but they were quickly signed by Universal and now they are back with Monochrome, yet another mini album. The mini’s producer was Yoshihito Onda, a legendary figure of the Japanese music scene mostly known as the bassist of the important ’90s pop punk group Judy And Mary, and besides four brand new tracks they also included two re-takes from their latest album. They made a music video for the opening track, aoi michi (青い道), but only the preview version is up on Youtube for now, so I also included the video for the original version of one of the re-recorded tracks, Tokyo Submarine.