A Japanese female vocalist formerly of Thug Murder who gruffly sings mostly in English over straight-up, highly polished street punk. What else do you want?

Japan has a problem with highly stylized subculture, with fashion taking the forefront of damn near everything. Rarely will you find a Japanese band that doesn't take their fashion sense as seriously as their music, which becomes a problem when the fashion becomes more important than the music. Because then, you have shitty music. But if you have a band that can get the music part down pretty good, who's going to complain about that perfectly spiked hair?

Clearly the focus is on Ryoko, who takes her singing into a rambling discourse with herself on a few tracks. Chord by chord, you could match this album to 3/4 of all street punk bands out there. But I can't say no to Japanese unintentional camp. Fuck, half the time I listen to Guitar Wolf, it's just so I can hear those accents trying to pronounce the words "roaring blood." The second half is so I can hear the added syllables to "jet-o generation."

This biddy was in a band called Thug Murder, which is badass. She kind of sounds like Brody Armstrong (or whatever her last name is), which isn't badass. I could go either way on this album.

But in conjunction with whatever the hell I proclaim to be my set of beliefs, I proclaim Last Target the Best Japanese Street Punk Release to See American Soil That Was Released in 2005 That I Didn't Get Around to Reviewing Until 2007. There are 13 songs. The last one's called "We're the One," which doesn't make sense. Another song's called "Don't Shine Your Boots with a Half-Baked Will," but in my work's iTunes it shows up as "Don't Skedhine Your Boots with a Half-Baked Will." I don't know why. You really shouldn't have read this review all the way until this sentence.