Described by Julian Cope as "the Can of heavy rock," Japan's Flower Travellin' Band never dented U.S. charts in their early '70s heyday but helped pioneer both Japanoise and stoner metal years ahead of their successors. Beginning in the late '60s as Yuya Uchida & the Flowers, the band scabrously covered western rock songs. After recruiting afroed singer Joe Yamanaka, they adopted the FTB moniker and morphed into a Black Sabbath-inspired quartet. They released several albums in the late '60s and early '70s of intense psych-prog and hard rock--and a certifiably classic of proto-stoner metal, 1970's SATORI. With Yamanaka's gymnastic yelps and guitarist Hideki Ishima's Eastern-inflected, fuzz-metal leads, Flower Travellin' Band surely bears mention with the best hard rock of the era. The band reunited in 2008 but ceased activity in 2010 when Yamanaka was diagnosed with lung cancer; the singer died from the disease in August 2011.