Tokyo Blade: Now that’s a name you don’t hear uttered as often as it should be. Sure, these twenty-something year old traditional metal bandwagoners will be the first to namedrop Saxon, Diamond Head, and Angel Witch (it never fails) amongst their list of favorite NWOBHM bands that aren’t Iron Maiden. Tokyo Blade? And while I wouldn’t call them “obscure”, I don’t hear them mentioned nearly as often as their peers, which is crazy. Equally as crazy is the fact that Tokyo Blade have been releasing new music regularly since 2018 with their classic early ’80s lineup. Yes, you read that correctly.
Now admittedly, I haven’t kept up with the entirety of Tokyo Blade’s reunion output. I recall listening to 2018’s Unbroken and enjoying it casually, before this here webzine was even a thought in my college aged brain. So considering its been 7 years since I last gave these veterans a serious listen, outside of the usual spins of their 1983 self titled and magnum opus, Night of the Blade (1984), I figured I’d give their latest effort, Time Is the Fire, a fair stab. Sure, the 14 song, hour and 15 minute runtime definitely put me on edge, but I thought to myself, “What’s the worst a classic NWOBHM band can do in that space of time?”
For the most part, Time Is the Fire stays true to the band’s ’80s roots, placing twin guitar heroics and retro melodies above all else. Cuts like “The Devil in You”, “Soldier On”, and “The Six Hundred” wouldn’t sound out of place on a traditional metal mixtape circa ’83. The opening “Feeding the Rat” and anthemic “We Burn” are also enjoyable, channeling the latter day output of Saxon and Judas Priest, while “More to the Fire” and “Written in Blood” almost sound like throwbacks to the band’s much maligned late ’80s glam metal era (Heads up: Lackluster as those albums were, they didn’t suck nearly as bad as you remember).
On the flip side, Time is not without its flaws. The album is heavily weighed down by bleak, dismal pseudo-ballads like “The Enemy Within”, “Going with the Flow”, and “Don’t Bleed Over Me”. There’s also faceless melodic hard rockers (“Are You Happy Now”) and an ill fated attempt at prog metal (“Ramesses”). As if these musical detours weren’t bad enough, the production itself is very uneven, with the mix at times blurring the instruments together (see “Written in Blood”) and frontman Alan Marsh’s powerhouse vocals sounding overprocessed and robotic throughout. It pains me to type this for a band who made their name off of no-nonsense melodic metal of the highest order.
With a proper production job and serious song-editing (the industry practice of “filling the CD” has NEVER worked), Time has the potential of being a highly enjoyable traditional metal banger, as opposed to the tedious affair that it is. Hence why I’ll inevitably overcome my sonic qualms with this album and just make a Spotify playlist consisting of the songs I do enjoy on here. Time isn’t completely good for nothing, but it also isn’t worth the time needed to listen to and process such an outing.
5 out of 10
Label: Dissonance Productions
Genre: Heavy Metal
For fans of: Tygers of Pan Tang, Skull Fist, Shogun