While some bands have recently been keen to claim a line of descent from the heyday of grunge, UK outfit Japanese Voyeurs have found themselves shifting, a little awkwardly, away from the revivalist tag with which they've been lumped. “I love grunge”, explains lead singer/guitarist Romily Alice, “but its not one hundred percent apt as a description for us.”

The group have a shared love of Tool and Kyuss, and a collective interest that draws in doom, sludge and tech metal. They're fresh from a “surreal” tour with Guns n’ Roses legend Slash. “It was challenging. As the support band you have to win over the crowd, so we had our work cut out for us. The English shows were fun, but the Italy shows were terrifying. When you have around 10,000 Italian kids not wanting to watch you play, it takes a lot of mental strength to keep your shit together.” Alice, the groups principle lyricist, now finds herself busy writing the follow-up to their brilliantly loud debut, Yolk, a tight ride of heavy distortion, ear-rattling riffs and Alice's distinctive vocals. “It always takes a couple of days to get past the crap and into something good,” she says of the writing process. “I need big blocks of time, lots of reading and no TV watching to get my brain working.”

Yolk took themes of birth and growth and skewed them to creepy effect, digging into the murkier, primal side of the human mind - an “unintentional” theme that shifted into focus once they'd finished the album. It dropped a mere three months back, but the band have been together since 2007, and as Alice points out, “We wrote the album a long time ago, so we've come a long way”.

In their official band site's biography, Romily explains their fascination with psychology, Jung and the dark side of the psyche: “It's about….how you have to control that while living in a society where you have to go to work and form relationships and try to be a good person. I suppose I'm quite interested in that idea because it's something I myself find quite difficult to do.” Rock has, traditionally, been seen as a refuge against societies norms, the anti nine-to-five. It's not as straightforward as that though, as Romily explains. “Everyone has to function in society to some extent, whether its going to work meetings, or meeting people at gigs. We all work outside of the band, so we do still have to be functioning members of society. I have found it challenging, and I think most people I know do too, to be a good person and fulfill what's required of you”.

The title of their first EP, 2009's Sicking & Creaming, puts a name to the element of rebellion in Japanese Voyeurs repertoire, a gleefully gross aesthetic that filters through their lyrical content and the creepy art (eerie fetal scans, exploding dolls, broken, bloody teeth and goo) that adorns their sleeve art and tour merchandise. “In that sense we definitely don't take ourselves too seriously,” Romily says. “I think its funny to watch people, to see what will happen if you don't conform. I like that kind of petulant, stubbornness.”

There's an animalistic sexiness to the band's energy, a sweaty, hormonal drive captured in their sludgy live cover of NIN's 'Closer', a song famous for the hook “I wanna fuck you like an animal”. Even their band name, inspired by a series of pictures taken by a Japanese photographer in the ‘70s who stumbled upon an orgy in a park and used pioneering infrared film to capture it - speaks of desire, kink and taboo. “Sex is a part of everything really,” agrees Romily. “Rock and sex have always gone hand in hand. There is something visceral about being on stage, playing guitar and making loud noise, and we're not afraid of that.”

The distinction between the cerebral sex appeal of Japanese Voyeurs and the kinderwhore style of the ‘90's that Romily has been associated with (due, in large part, to her high pitched vocals) is an important one. “I'm not a big fan of the babydoll, and riot grrrl's overt sexuality thing looks-wise. I have mixed feelings towards it. I think, as a women in music, it can be a bit of a cheap trick.” She's a fan of Babes In Toyland's Kat Bjelland (who never specifically allied herself to the riot grrrl movement). “The way Bjelland mixed her image and her music was brilliant. She snarled, and sweated and screamed” - but feels using sex in rock as any kind of feminist message would be futile in the pervading climate of raunch pop, “where all these pop star women are sex on a plate with a soundtrack,” she says. “If you want to be taken seriously you have to not let the pressure to be like that effect you.”

We're a long way from the ‘90's, and the distinct lack of women who make it through today's rock press filter is exacerbated by their homogenization in music criticism. Romily is, quite rightly, a little pissed at the decidedly sloppy comparisons Japanese Voyeurs have endured - to the operatic, classically inspired Evanescence and the hyperactive, clean cut pop punk of Paramore. “I think it's so ridiculous it's almost not worth commenting on. It just shows how underrepresented women are,” she says. It's the kind of pigeonholing that a character like Tank Girl would never tolerate - the band share a love of graphic novels, and it's easy to see the influence of Hewlitt and Martin's snotty-nosed, foul-mouthed icon in their video for 'Cry Baby'. “I love Tank Girl. It's funny as hell. That's the kind of gross, rebellious attitude that I really like”. Romily's love for the work of Alan Moore and Meryvn Peake is well documented, but her current amore is French art collective Le Dernier Cri, and one half of its de-facto leading couple, Caroline Sury. “She's an incredible artist. She does these strange, surreal pictures, with amazing colours. She wrote one about when she found out she was pregnant, and her husband's reaction. It's this in-yr-face account of the pregnancy and birth. To dispel the myth that every creation of a life is a wonderful, beautiful thing.”

The band have used their appreciation for zines and graphic novels astutely, creating online strip Tamago: Child Of Doom in response to their apathy about the self-promotion that social media sites requires. “I'm very jealous of bands like The Melvins and Sonic Youth, who got to have so much control about what they let out. They didn't have this de-masking internet thing, where someone can just Google you and know everything and take away all the mystery. Its painful. I can't do that whole “I just ate a Dairy Milk” Twitter stuff.” She tolerates the blogosphere when necessary though, and has set up a site for Heavy Child, the umbrella name for her solo projects, which include custom-made distortion pedals, an art she learnt in Canada when recording Yolk with GGGarth Richardson. “It's on hold at the moment because it's so expensive to source parts from England. Its a really great discipline though; you get the intricate, systematic process of populating a circuit board, which is really methodical, and then you get to work on the casing art work, which is really creative. It's a nice balance.”

She's dubbed the few models that appear on her site 'Screaming Meat', a title lifted from Alan Moore's famous series, Swamp Thing, “Its a line about human suffering, and wanting to cease the wailing of screaming meat” she laughs.


Japanese Voyeurs live dates:

18/10/11 Clwb Ifor Bach - Cardiff
19/10/11 Rainbow - Birmingham
21/10/11 Joiners - Southampton
24/10/11 The Croft - Bristol
26/10/11 The Shipping Forecast - Liverpool
27/10/11 Roadhouse - Manchester
29/10/11 Westend Indoor Festival - Dortmund, Germany
31/10/11 The Bodega - Nottingham
01/11/11 Captains Rest - Glasgow
05/11/11 The Duchess (Basement) - York
06/11/11 The Lamp - Hull
08/11/11 The Cockpit - Leeds
09/11/11 Camden Barfly - London