Review by Daniel for Loudness - Devil Soldier (1982)
The 1981 debut album from Japan’s Loudness entitled “The Birthday Eve” showed a fair amount of promise but wouldn't see its potential fully realized which was partially due to the band's failure to create a unique sound. "The Birthday Eve" was quite successful in Japan nonetheless though so Loudness didn’t waste any time in following it up with their sophomore outing “Devil Soldier” which sees them return with the same lineup.
Unsurprisingly given the short time period between releases, “Devil Soldier” isn’t a huge departure from what we heard on “The Birthday Eve” but it does showcase some noticeable improvements. Firstly, the production is a little better with the band sounding a bit more professional even if there is still some room for improvement. The excellent musicianship Loudness displayed on the debut is still a major drawcard & I love bass player Masayoshi Yamashita’s style in particular. He’s always doing something interesting while lead guitar virtuoso Akira Takasaki is the clear highlight of the album. He'd hinted at what he was capable of on “The Birthday Eve” but here we see him stepping up to another level altogether with his Eddie Van Halen-influenced shredding now taking more expansive & exotic directions. He was comfortably one of the most impressive lead guitarists in the entire metal movement up to that time. Singer Minoru Niihara puts in another solid display of higher register vocal prowess with his lyrics again being delivered in Japanese with the exception of the song-titles. This is still a bit of an annoyance for me personally it has to be said.
Loudness’ sound still sits somewhere between heavy metal & hard rock with the occasional progressive tendency. They haven’t dropped the rock influence altogether yet but that’s not an issue. What IS an issue however is the inconsistent nature of the song-writing. It was a problem on “The Birthday Eve” & it’s still a problem here. In fact, if I examine the tracklisting on a track by track basis I find that I only really enjoy half of the eight songs here & that’s not enough to make me want to come back for repeat listens. The result of that is that I can only rate “Devil Soldier” slightly ahead of “The Birthday Eve” overall. Loudness still had a bit of work to do if they wanted to appeal to the global market rather than settling for a purely local fanbase but all of the ingredients were there & I get the feeling that they just needed an experienced international producer to focus them in the right direction.