Much like its immediate predecessor,
V, 1988's
Vibe saw Japan's
Vow Wow totally transformed into a cliché-ridden, synthesizer-doused pop-metal enterprise, no different from hundreds of American bands they clearly sought to emulate, even though their limited label support and U.K.-based organization made it impossible for them to really compete for U.S. radio and MTV spins. As a result, expertly performed, meticulously coiffed, but ultimately soulless material like "Spellbound," "I Feel the Power," and "Rock Me Now" had about as much staying power as last week's hairspray and mascara; while the band's inexcusable application of rococo ‘80s production values to
the Beatles' "Helter Skelter" made
Winger's contemporaneous molestation of
Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" sound quite palatable by comparison. Adding insult to injury, the album's second half got even worse (these songs are so bad they frankly defy logic), and even though lead guitarist
Kyoji Yamamoto still managed to astound almost every time he twiddled his fingers across that fretboard, frontman
Genki Hitomi's warbling shrieks had become so utterly indistinguishable from those of
Loudness frontman
Minoru Niihara that
Vow Wow couldn't even get beyond comparisons to their one time protégés. Clearly,
Vow Wow were treading water on an epic scale, and it was only a matter of time before the group sank beneath the surface. [A note of warning: in 1989,
Vibe was inexplicably re-sequenced, repackaged, and reissued under the title
Helter Skelter, meaning there are two separate versions of this sonic atrocity out there -- for heaven's sake, try to avoid them both!]