Loudness

By the time they were introduced to the West by 1985's Thunder in the East album, Japan's Loudness had arguably already hit their peak. Their previous effort, Disillusion, was the fourth chart-topping release in their homeland, not to mention a critical triumph among members of the European press. But when faced with a contingency plan to conquer America, Loudness were gradually forced to alter their sound by unsuitable producers and clueless record company hacks, never coming close to translating their far-East success into Western stardom…

A live DVD containing the complete recording of the live "LOUDNESS LIVE ROCKSHOCKS2006" held at the Tokyo International Forum on November 25, 2006 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the formation!…

A strong rhythm corps of support drummer Ryuichi Nishida who it should have been in such an album when I record it as it is after ライヴ performance that it becomes such it, member reason ""HURRICANE EYES" from "JEALOUSY" which became the work of the first LOUDNESS last for 30 years, and is connected with each other in base and it of most new work "RISE TO GLORY" called", vocalist of Minoru Niihara who a clear guitar of Akira Takasaki plays the musical piece from these 3 works and lengthens more and more, and goes and Masayoshi Yamashita crawling on the ground…

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…

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…