With Japanese noise rockers Hijokaidan on the bill, Kill The Silence is a Hong Kong music festival that lives up to its name

For fans ofextreme Japanese act Hijokaidan, a band so "out there" that its members have been known to urinate on stage and throw buckets of rotting-fish-infused water into the audience, the experience of seeing them perform in a Hong Kong high school auditorium might feel odd.

The Osaka band have been challenging the status quo and redefining music for more than 30 years with their distortion-heavy, chaotic, harsh-sounding and ultra-aggressive shows that push the boundaries of performance art. They will be headlining Hong Kong's Kill the Silence experimental music festival this month.

Hijokaidan have had several roster changes (at one point having 14 members, with some banned from many venues across Japan for destroying stage hardware and making scenes that were wildly at odds with reserved Japanese culture), but its one constant is Jojo Hiroshige — a fanatical follower of UK space rock group Hawkwind — as the defacto lead.

Describing one of Hijokaidan's earliest performances, former band member Toshiji Mikawa recalls: "Jojo prepared two guitars but had smashed up both of them, so when there were calls for an encore after our set, he went onto the stage and said 'Sorry I've managed to break both my guitars so I can't play any more. We've also got a record out, so buy it and listen to it at home.'"