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When TV chef Alton Brown adds salt to his dessert recipies, he always explains that salt is a flavor enhancer.

“You won’t know it’s there, until it’s not,” he says.

The “salt” was definitely missing from bloodthirsty butchers’ previous album, birdy. On the surface, birdy has all the hallmarks that makes the butchers such a reknowned punk band.

It was hard to find fault with the album, but it wasn’t easy to praise it either. (And my meandering review of birdy certainly demonstrates it.)

Whatever was missing from birdy is found again on banging the drum. In fact, repeat listens of banging the drum become more satisfying.

Having played with the butchers as a full-time member for two years now, ex-Number Girl guitarist Tabuchi Hisako makes a significant mark on the music. She serves as Lee Renaldo to Yoshimura Hideki’s Thurston Moore.

In fact, “Sanzan” and “B2” indulge in a bit of Goo-era Sonic Youth interplay. When “B2” concludes with a pair of guitar riffs entirely new to the song, I half-expected it to go on for another 10 minutes, awash in an ocean of distortion.

“Sanzan”, on the other hand, is one of the catchiest songs the butchers have written. The screaming chorus almost harkens to Number Girl, while the harmonizing conclusion offers a nice contrast.

“Yamaha-1” features Tabuchi on the chorus, and the sweetness of her vocals adds a pleasantly shocking shade to a buoyant song.

When the butchers pull back, its songs sound more like the extended, introspective workouts predominant on 2001’s yamane. “Plus/Minus” and the title track could have fit well on that previous album.

Instrumentals also take a big chunk of the program. “Maruzen House” and “This Is Music” are essentially karaoke tracks, hinting at melody and lyrics where there are really none. And the opening track, “Jushoo”, finds the band literally banging the drum — one full kit and a set of taiko drums.

Early reports described banging the drum as experimental, which it is — the butchers sound like they’re stretching themselves creatively and enjoying the results. Oddly enough, the album is also one of the most melodic the band has produced.

Maybe the experimentation brought back that intangible missing thing. More likely, the butchers stumbled onto their salt by simply playing hard and fast. Whatever the case, it’s nice to have it back.

For all the similarities between bloodthirsty butchers and Number Girl, including a common member between the two bands, one thing separates the two.

I hate to write this next sentence, but here it goes: Number Girl had better musicians.

That’s not intended to slag Yoshimura Hideki’s singing or Komatsu Masahiro’s drumming. In fact, I’ve praised bloodthirsty butchers for not being the most technically proficient band.

But just a side-by-side comparrison is enough to show the butchers never shared Number Girl’s laser precision with rhythm, nor its nimble arrangements.

And that’s how it should be.

But a big deal was made of the fact birdy is the first studio album to feature Number Girl’s Tabuchi Hisako as a full-time member.

The live album green on red was her true debut with the band, and she fit in quite well.

In fact, she fits in so well on birdy, it’s hard to distinguish her at all. And anyone who’s ever heard Tabuchi do a solo knows that’s not something that happens — at all.

At first, I suspected it was the spiritual affinity Tabuchi’s former band has with the butchers that made her performance seem indescript. After a while, I had to admit it to myself — Yoshimura isn’t the same kind of songwriter as Mukai.

Mukai wrote in a way that often brought Tabuchi into the foreground. Yoshimura doesn’t.

And that’s how it should be also.

birdy continues the concise, melodic streak started with 2003’s Kooya ni Okeru bloodthirsty butchers. The butchers have cut the length of the songs to a relatively short 4 to 5 minutes.

And many of these tracks are as melodic as anything on the last album, despite Yoshimura’s tone-deaf vocals. Add a “y” to the title of “Sunn”, and you get an approximate description of the song’s mood.

The title track also has a sing-song melody set against some ferocious guitar work.

Yoshimura does, however, put Tabuchi in a role Mukai never did — back-up singer. She adds a tinge of sweetness to “Walkman”, “Bandwagon” and “Kooya ni Okeru bloodthirsty butchers”. (Strange that the title track of the previous album would appear as the concluding track on the following album.)

Although melodic, birdy doesn’t quite possess the same hooks as the last album, and it can get tough remembering the songs afterward.

Toward the end, birdy falls back on the extended, mid-tempo songs that gave yamane its tone. The instrumental “Rat Music for Rat People” is beautiful despite the title.

birdy may not highlight bloodthirsty butchers’ new member the way she was before, but that doesn’t stop the album from being enjoyable.

bloodthirsty butchers were around before Number Girl was a twinkle in Mukai Shuutoku’s eye, and it’s around even after Number Girl ran its course.

And yet, no two bands seemed so suited for each other. Both groups laid catchy melodies over thick, dischordant harmonies and pushed their amplifiers to Spinal Tap-ian levels. The butchers still do.

So it was a welcome surprise when Number Girl’s master axegrinder, Tabuchi Hisako, became the butchers’ only new member in 15 years. Hisako-chan’s disregard for a tonal center fits nicely with bloodthirsty butchers’ liberal harmonies.

The chemistry between the band members impressed them so much, they decided to start taping their live performances. The results can be heard on the butchers’ first live album, green on red.

Tabuchi integrates herself incredibly well with the band. Whether she’s working with Shiina Ringo or Odani Misako, Hisako-chan stands out. But with bloodthirsty butchers, she sounds like she’s been with them for years.

When the full band kicks in on the opening “Faust”, Tabuchi stamps the track with her trademark fuzz. And when she noodles on the intro to “Soredake”, you’re glad guitarist/vocalist Yoshimura Hideki isn’t. (Yoshimura isn’t what anyone would call a shredder.)

But don’t think for a minute Tabuchi’s presence does anything to clean up the butchers’ sound. Unlike Number Girl, whose rhythmic precision called to mind early Helmet, bloodthirsty butchers haven’t quite channeled the concept of unison playing, which of course gives them their charm.

In fact, bassist Imoriya Takeshi and drummer Komatsu Masahiro seem intent on spreading themselves thin, Komatsu supplying the bass rhythm while Imoriya supplements the harmony. Throughout green on red, Komatsu is more likely to follow Yoshimura’s lead than to fortify Komatsu’s rhythms.

Unlike other live albums by Japanese artists, the butchers culled together green on red from a number of performances. Recent live albums by pop acts Do As Infinity and Bonnie Pink reveal the risk of capturing only one set of performances.

That said, the sound quality between tracks can vary widely. On “8gatsu”, the band sounds front and center, whereas on “Saraba Sekai Kunshu”, they sound like they’re playing in a fish bowl.

It’s still a better approach than committing to tape (or ones and zeroes) a performance that’s brilliant one moment, excruciating the next. The performances on green on red are consistently solid. (And consistently loud, but what else is new?)

Still, don’t expect green on red to resemble anything like Number Girl’s Sapporo Omoide in My Head Jootai or Kiroku Series. bloodthirsty butchers are long-winded while Number Girl was concise, and the 13 tracks on the album clock in at nearly 69 minutes.

After a while, green on red demands stamina from listeners, but with that level of intensity and passion, it’s a welcome request.

Despite the messy playing, the deadpan vocals and the crunchy guitars, bloodthirsty butchers writes some pretty advanced songs.

On past albums, the line between verse and chorus were blurred, and on the band’s 2001 debut for Toshiba-EMI, yamane, the butchers needed anywhere from 6 to 9 minutes to lay out all their ideas.

But on Kooya ni Okeru bloodthirsty butchers, the Japanese indie rock trio has taken pruning shears to its songs. They’re simpler, faster, shorter — 4 to 5 minutes is realtively shorter than 6 to 9 minutes — and definitely catchier.

Sure, “happy end” and “Nagisa Ni Te” were decent singles off of yamane, but they don’t match the immediate appeal of “Saraba Sekai Kunshu” or “Goblin” or “Hooi” (listed simply as an arrow pointing north).

“dorama” (i.e. “drama”) possesses a playfulness, while “real/melodic” harkens back to the energy of the band’s first indie albums.

While yamane was a beautiful exploration of the band’s darker side, Kooya ni Okeru bloodthirsty butchers finds the trio kicking it out the way the always have. Coupled with some real studio finese, this album is perhaps the butchers’ most upfront and spirited performance.

There’s a lot that’s familiar on the album. Yoshimura Hideki’s guitar playing never quite locks into the beat, and Komatsu Masahiro isn’t exactly a human metronome.

But it’s that messiness which gives the bloodthirsty butchers its indie charm. Punk has never been about technical precision.

The band reigns in the momentum of the album on the final two tracks of the album, “Acacia” and “Jigoku no Locker”, by slowing down the tempo and concluding as beautifully as they did the last time around.

Still, Kooya ni Okeru bloodthirsty butchers is light years away from the lo-fi punk ambitions of the band’s earliest work 15 years ago. The butchers are still writing the same kind of off-key indie rock as before, but they’ve refined it and made it clearer.

In short, this is bloodthirsty butchers at its finest.

An average bloodthirsty butchers song can last as long as seven minutes. Some stretch as long as nine.

And while the butchers started out in 1987 as a rough-hewned, kill-the-vocal-cords kind of indie band, its dischordant, drawn-out songs always toed the line between brashness and hypnotism.

The guys in bloodthirsty butchers are a good 15 years older now, so it’s no surprise yamane doesn’t blare out of the stereo speakers as harshly as Kocorono or early songs such as “Modulator”.

The butchers have even indulged in a bit of quiet introspections on the not-quite instrumental “no future”. Yoshimura Hideki’s vocals are heavily processed to sound robotic, and as a result, the undecipherable singing focuses more attention on the song’s beautiful melody.

The butchers may not be as loud as they used to be — not to say you can’t play yamane loud and piss off the neighbors — but the hypnotic elements of the band’s songwriting are still in full force.

“wagamama no hitori” and two numbered tracks both sporting the title “-100%” take a single idea and pretty much stick with it for five to seven minutes at a time.

“happy end” and “nagasinanite”, the two “singles” from yamane, follow typical verse-chorus-verse patterns — only the verses and chorus have verses, choruses and bridges within themselves.

Toward the end of “kaze”, Yoshimura flashes a Sonic Youth card, hammering away at some off-kilter chords worthy of Goo.

Even though yamane has only nine tracks and clocks in at close to an hour, those long songs never feel like they’ve taken twice the length of a standard three-minute pop song.

Yoshimura and bandmates Imoriya Takeshi (bass) and Komatsu Masahiro (drums) aren’t dramatic, wanking instrumentalists. Hell, Yoshimura’s off-key warble takes a lot of adjusting, and his guitar solos won’t give Number Girl’s Tabuchi Hisako any sleepless nights.

But the butchers are good at finding a bunch of cool-sounding chords, and they know how to fit the right melody to those chords. They don’t need much fancy arrangements, and they sure know how to make a lot out very minimal elements.