MELT-BANANA lights it up Thursday at the Domino Room.

For nearly three decades, MELT-BANANA has been one of the coolest bands to take up permanent residence way out on music’s fringe.

The Tokyo-based duo plays noisy punk rock at a breakneck pace, often sounding like a pop-rock band forever stuck in fast-forward.

Yako’s high-pitched vocals bring a striking amount of melody to the band’s music, while Agata’s wild guitar playing and experiments with electronic effects has earned MELT-BANANA descriptors like no wave (weird punk, basically), grindcore (a collision of heavy metal and hardcore) and an “intense tech-punk” band of “staggering consistency,” according to a 2003 review on Pitchfork, a taste-making music website.

To give you a better sense, perhaps, of MELT-BANANA’s place in the musical universe and cool factor, consider who they’ve opened for over the years: Jim O’Rourke, Mr. Bungle, Melvins, Fantômas, Tool, Napalm Death and fellow Japanese legends Zeni Geva, to name a few. A certain sector of band-shirted dudes who smell like a grimy record store are salivating at that list as we speak.

On Thursday night, MELT-BANANA will stop in Bend for a show at the Domino Room, where they’ll headline a bill that also includes the excellent L.A. psych-rock band Wand and thrash-punkers Deaf Club, which includes members of The Locust and ACxDC (the contemporary punk band, not the famous Australian group). Recently, GO! reached out to MELT-BANANA for an interview, and Yako answered a few questions via email.

GO!: When you started MELT-BANANA, what was your goal, musically? What were you hoping to do?

Yako: I believe we started MELT-BANANA in 1993. We were doing a band before that, and we named the band MELT-BANANA in April 1993, so we usually say 1993. We have not thought about our goal musically, and we still don’t know what our goal is. We just try to make something that we feel is good and exciting.

GO!: Your music is both heavy and catchy. When you write, how do you balance those two qualities?

Y: When we started the band, we both liked extreme kinds of stuff like noise, grindcore, hardcore, etc., and at the same time, we liked pop music, hip-hop, dance music and other catchy things. That’s why it was a natural thing for us to write music containing both factors. And yes, it is sometimes hard to balance. In times like that, we just need to follow our own taste and sense.

GO!: Next year marks 30 years of MELT-BANANA. To what do you credit the band’s longevity?

Y: Wow! That’s long! We don’t feel that we have already spent such a long time playing in a band. I guess that’s why we have lasted so long. When Beck came to Japan a while ago, we had a chance to meet him. He told us that he had been on tour for years and years, and he had not felt he had spent so much time leaving home to keep touring the world. I guess it feels like time passes differently while on tour.

GO!: What do you hope people take away from your music or your live show?

Y: Whatever is fine, you know? If people enjoy our music and feel something, that is the best. And we feel we can share something with them, which makes us happy.

Who: Melt-Banana, with Wand and Deaf Club

When: 8 p.m. Thursday, doors open 7 p.m.

Where: Domino Room, 51 NW Greenwood Ave., Bend,

Cost: $25

Contact: 1988entertainment.com