Review by Daniel for Loudness - The Birthday Eve (1981)

Japanese four-piece heavy metal outfit Loudness formed in Osaka in May 1981 & surprisingly their debut album “The Birthday Eve” was released just six months later in November of '81. It’s generally regarded as the first major Japanese metal release of any note & it's worth noting that Loudness actually formed out of the ashes of record label creation & pop rock boy band Lazy. I’ve unfortunately experienced Lazy’s 1980 album “Uchusen Chikyugo”. It sits in a horrible place somewhere between heavy metal & commercial pop rock & I certainly wouldn’t recommend that any of you attempt to listen to it. Anyway... I’d imagine that at least some of the material on the Loudness debut would actually have been reworkings of newer & unrecorded Lazy material given the short time frame between forming & releasing their debut although the three members of Lazy that formed Loudness have since made it known that the reason for the disbanding of Lazy was a general dislike for their musical direction.

Loudness were immediately picked up by major record label Nippon Columbia & this would likely be the major reason for the album being pretty successful in Japan despite a general lack of media attention or a clear hit single. Musically, it’s pretty obvious that the time spent learning their craft in the limelight from a young age had paid off as all of the instrumentation here is of a very high level.  Gifted guitarist Akira Takasaki was the clear centre-piece of the band & his shredding Ritchie Blackmore & Eddie Van Halen influenced guitar solos are pretty impressive for the time (particularly for a band from such a new part of the metal landscape) but the rhythm section were also very capable.

The greats of 70’s hard rock & heavy metal were clearly an influence with Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Rainbow & Black Sabbath all popping up at times although Loudness present these influences in a noticeably 80’s package. It’s just that little bit flashier & more clinical. Vocalist Minoru Niihara is quite talented too. He presents an emotive higher range vocal delivery that often reminds me of the direction that some of the bigger name progressive metal bands like Queensryche & Fates Warning would take later on in the 80’s. The lyrics are mostly in Japanese which might turn a few people off & I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t feel a little bit of that myself. Strangely, either the band or the record label decided to give the songs English titles & to sing many of the title lines in English on these songs. It’s like they’ve taken an each way bet.

Overall though, I really want to like “The Birthday Eve” but I’m not sure that Loudness had given themselves enough time to allow their sound to fully mature at this early stage. They just seem to be repackaging elements of their favourite bands & hoping it will work. It does to an extent but I still find that there’s not enough songs that I genuinely get enjoyment from & it results in a release that falls a little short of the mark. There’s nothing disgraceful here but Loudness’ mixture of heavy metal & hard rock rarely treads new ground or reaches anywhere near the heights of their idols.