Supreme Ape Leader

Keigo Oyamada remembers well his first encounter with rock 'n' roll. He was in the fifth grade and an older cousin played him some Love Gun-era Kiss. "I liked them right off," says Oyamada, 33. "They all looked like manga monsters to me." That initiation into the concept of rock 'n' roll as fantasy would be the germination of Oyamada's own career. (He acquired his musical pseudonym, Cornelius, from the name of a friendly simian in the 1968 movie Planet of the Apes.) But instead of platform leather boots, pancake makeup and pyrotechnic stage shows, Oyamada would go on to vent...