Kei Shibata

Something of a lost funk legend, Black Octopus was recorded by bassist Paul Jackson during a 1978 tour of Japan with Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, but didn't see an American release until more than two decades later. Augmented with four bonus tracks, the album lives up to the reputation it developed in exile, its blend of "Chameleon"-like fusion, disco, R&B, and spacy jazz driven by Jackson's fatback basslines into rare groove nirvana.

This is the second album release by the incarnation of Anthem with Yukio Morikawa on vocals. By this time Yukio Morikawa was a welcome and suitable replacement for Eizo Sakamoto, and his confident (to say the least) vocal delivery indicates that he was comfortable in the recording of this album…

Long running Japanese metallers, Anthem, made a very solid splash into the international metal circles with this album. I remember hearing the title track many years ago on my college radio station of choice's metal show and being very impressed with it. Listening to this again over 20 years after the fact reveals that this album is holding up pretty well and features some excellent tunes…

This album, released in 1988, was the first album for the new lineup of the band. After the shock departure of (due to stress and pressure to perform mounting on) vocalist Eizo Sakamoto, the band looked set to either disband or take a nosedive in terms of popularity. They did neither. Vocalist Yukio Morikawa, who had previously auditioned when previous vocalist Sakamoto Eizo got the job after the band narrowing it down to these two, was called back to see what would have happened had he joined…