Reading the YouTube comments on a Merzbow song will give you a good idea of how polarizing his art can be.

Is this music? What did I just hear? Do people seriously listen to this?

Those are a few questions you’ll see from people attempting to understand the perplexing works of Merzbow, a.k.a. Masami Akita.

As one commenter suggests on Merzbow’s especially harsh 1994 album Venereology, “When you die and go to hell this is what you will listen to for eternity.”

Nevertheless, the pioneering Japanese noisemaker has amassed a large cult following with his strange, loud, often frightening soundscapes. After releasing more than 300 albums since 1980 — he won’t confirm exactly how many — the king of noise is coming to Edmonton.

Merzbow will play Pawn Shop Live, 10551 82 Ave., Wednesday night.

Akita played drums in a blues-rock band in high school in the early ‘70s that gradually moved toward improvisation and free jazz, influenced by the sounds of King Crimson and Albert Ayler.

When he grew bored of that, he broke free from all musical trappings.

“I felt I reached a dead end just playing instruments so I quit playing and tried other things like tapping the floor of the studio or rattling the chairs,” Akita explains.

“Quitting something is so thrilling to me, because it tells me what’s important.”

He was struck by avant-garde works like Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and Walter Marchetti’s jarring Homemade Electric Music. While studying fine art in university, Akita became obsessed with Dadaism and surrealism, and ditched conventional instruments altogether.

“All of this led me to making music only by noises and sounds generated solely by non-instruments,” he says. “This was the birth of Merzbow.”

Merzbow’s early recordings, made with collaborator Kiyoshi Mizutani, used tape loops and percussion, and the cassettes were adorned with collages made from pornographic magazines he found in the Tokyo subway.

Merzbow moved to digital recordings in the 1990s to simplify for touring, which – coupled with a passion for grindcore and death metal – led to the harsh sound that came to define his art. Albums like Pulse Demon were mastered at unusually high volumes, adding to the blurring, pummeling sonic assault.

He’s collaborated with the likes of Faith No More frontman Mike Patton and helped forge a niche that spawned a growing international community of experimental noise artists.

While some musicians are chided as sellouts for making sappy love songs, Merzbow took heat from some of his fans fans for merely using actual rhythms on his 2002 album Merzbeat.

He does not use lyrics, which has only helped shroud Akita in mystery.

A vegan and animal rights activist, he’s made political statements with album titles like 2007’s Peace for Animals and by performing on a laptop with a large “Meat is Murder” sticker.

The seeds of his activism were planted in 2002 when he began raising chickens.

“I gradually started to be concerned and care about chickens and all the barn animals I used to eat without giving it a second thought before,” he says.

The long-haired 57-year-old, who typically performs wearing sunglasses, has also written numerous books on fetishism and post-modern culture.

His latest album Tamayodo and upcoming release Nezumimochi are “monotonic electro pulse-noise works by all analogue equipments.”

On Wednesday, Merbow will play handmade instruments with contact microphones that connect to effect pedals and a laptop.

Warming the stage will be Holzkopf and Botfly from Vancouver, as well as Edmonton acts Borys and Zebra Pulse.

Tickets are $20 through yeglive.ca