August 2022 Feature Release - The Guardians Edition
This month’s feature release for The Guardians, nominated by me, is LOUDNESS' 1989 Heavy Metal album Soldier of Fortune. I came across these guys while making last month's playlist and was pretty impressed by what I heard; they especially piqued my interest because they're one of the only Japanese Heavy Metal bands I've seen that were active during the 1980's. Let us know what you think as we enjoy the discussion and banter that comes from highlighting releases like these.
LOUDNESS - Soldier Of Fortune (Link)
Ok, so I feel like I should kick off this review with a clear disclaimer. I’ve had quite a bit of exposure to Loudness over the years but have never been a fan of what I’ve heard. My experiences largely sit within the band’s first four albums which saw the light of day between 1981 & 1984 &, while none of those releases were exactly horrible, they each left me feeling decidedly underwhelmed & wondering how records like “Disillusion” & “The Law of Devil’s Land” have become so popular with fans of the classic heavy metal sound. Akira Takasaki is certainly a wonderful guitar virtuoso but that was never enough to combat the cheesy & generic song-writing & the horrible Japanese-accented lyrics. Regardless, I’ve never been one to let internal bias direct my views on a release that I’ve previously been unacquainted with so let’s see what “Soldier of Fortune” is all about, shall we?
Loudness have certainly proven themselves to be quite prolific over the years as they’d released a full four albums in the time between 1984’s “Disillusion” (arguably their most highly acclaimed record) & 1989’s “Soldier of Fortune”. I remember some of their earlier material having a noticeable Rush-style progressive rock influence but by this stage they’d dropped that altogether with the late 80’s model of Loudness opting for a more straight-down-the-line hard rock-infused heavy metal sound. Akira’s devastating axe-slinging skills are the clear highlight of the album & this may just be the finest performance I’ve heard from him to date with Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads & Yngwie Malmsteen influences all being combined into a truly slaying example of the late 80’s shred phenomenon. The other noteworthy element of “Solder of Fortune” is the incorporation of a new American vocalist in Mike Vescera who offers the band a newly found accessibility. He also goes a long way to solving the problems I mentioned earlier with original singer Minoru Niihara as the vocal delivery is no longer an issue for me here.
“Soldier of Fortune” kicks off pretty well to be honest & after the first few songs I was wondering whether I may have found a Loudness record I could actually appreciate. Unfortunately though, things start to got noticeably rocky through the middle of the album with hard rocker “Red Light Shooter” falling pretty flat & the two ballads “Twenty-Five Days” & “Lost Without Your Love” reminding me of my qualms with the band’s earlier releases. Things do start to pick up late in the piece before tripping over themselves again with lazy power metal closer “Demon Disease”. Don’t get me wrong. There are some decent tunes here & I get enjoyment out of a good 60% of the tracklisting. It’s just that there are no obvious highlight tracks to balance out the low points & that leaves me feeling like the whole experience is more of a chore than it would have been if there had of been one or two real belters included.
Poor Loudness. They try so hard but may be destined never to see my head turn in admiration, despite the presence of a guitar god of the highest order. “Soldier of Fortune” is a more straight forward heavy metal record than earlier outings & this is both its strength & weakness. It can sound pretty basic in its makeup at times but also seems a touch more focused at the same time. If pushed I’d suggest that it’s the Loudness record that’s come the closest to hitting the mark in my experiences with the band to date but they’ve still got a lot of work to do if they want to see me singing their praises.
For fans of Yngwie Malmsteen, Dokken & Accept.
3/5
There were actually quite a lot of Japanese heavy metal bands around during the '80s, most notably Anthem, Earthshaker and Seikima-II. Its just that most of them ended up doing poorly outside of Japan or just never bothered to begin with. I think the only ones that managed well were these guys, Bow Wow and Show-Ya, and the latter two moreso with the rock crowd than with metalheads.
Another fun fact, Loudness might just possibly be the band where its members have the most side projects in existence. The guitarist, Akira Takasaki, and I think the bassist and vocalist each have their own solo albums. There's also a quasi-supergroup by the name of M.T. Fuji. Finally, most of the band also created the music for the albums of '80s Japanese singer Misako Honjoh. They were busy little bees during the '80s.
As to this album, its been a long time since I listened to it, but I believe this is the album where they got rid of their original vocalist to try to chase more American success with an American vocalist. Guess it worked, though I myself was introduced to the band through Thunder in the East.
Don't forget the awful Lazy who were a precursor to Loudness. They were essentially a record company-instigated teenage boy band who decided to change direction & go in a heavier direction at some stage. The album I've heard from them (i.e 1980's "Uchusen Chikyugo") was an absolutely atrocious blend of heavy metal & pop rock & I regard it as one of the worst metal releases I've ever had the displeasure of experiencing.
Gave this one last listen today and I gotta agree, was expecting a bit more out of Solider of Fortune. The album starts out with the killer "Soldier of Fortune", the passable "You Shook Me" which I honestly can't take too seriously since my brain's wires get insanely crossed with the AC/DC song, and the song that inspired this Feature choice "Danger of Love". The album then quickly derails with the run between "Twenty-Five Days" and "Long After Midnight"; "Demon Disease" is a pretty great closer as it goes back to what made the opener "Soldier of Fortune" great, but the rest of the album is a weirdly middling affair of Hard Rock influences and chorus structures that doesn't offer any standout tracks compared to the beginning of the album. It's not like "Faces in the Fire" or "Long After Midnight" are below average songs, but they also don't do anything spectacular either. I'm not a big fan of "Red Light Shooter" and the two ballads don't really hold up for repeated listens, so Soldier of Fortune is basically a singles album for me. I wasn't aware of the vocalist change before posting this, so maybe the earlier vocalist and style would be more interesting to me, like Morpheus said? Guess I'll have to check that out someday but for now, this is very passable Heavy Metal with a few notable tunes.
3/5