"I just had a connection with the sound of the words," says singer and bass player Natsuko Miyamoto when she answers my question about the name of her band, Mass of the Fermenting Dregs. Before I can pursue the question further: about the words, about where and when she first put them together, about this "connection" to a lump of decomposing sludge, she adds, "A band name is not as important as the music." Touche.
I change tact. It can't be as simple as that. I ask what some of the best or coolest band names are, hoping to catch them out and head back down the "crazy Japanese band name" avenue, but in keeping with her response, both she and guitarist Chiemi Ishimoto draw blanks.
We are sitting in the EMI/AVOCADO Records office with their A&R people. With a name like Mass of the Fermenting Dregs, you would expect an interview like this to take place in a destroyed hotel room with black drapes covering the windows, floor littered with spent and mangled beer cans, cigarette boxes, ashtrays, and other detritus of rock and roll debauchery. But no, the two young women I am speaking with bear no resemblance whatsoever to a road- hardened, booze-fueled metal band.