Album review : TOKYO BLADE – Time Is The Fire

January 8th, 2025 by brianmc

Cherry Red [Release date : 17.01.25]

Something of a coup for Cherry Red, wresting Tokyo Blade away from the Dissonance label, who’ve released the band’s previous two albums.

In fairness, the Cherry Red reach has increased dramatically in recent years, and Time Is The Fire will be getting a considerable PR push around the 17/1/25 release date.

True heavy metal survivors, Tokyo Blade grew out of NWOBHM, and in the 40 years since their inception, they’ve become poster boys for revolving doors.

In multiple guises, they’ve have released 14 albums, it seems with a different line up each time.

And then, in 2014, the classic lineup reformed. Andy Boulton, Alan Marsh, Steve Pierce, Andy Wrighton and John Wiggins.

Time Is The Fire marks the band’s fourth album with the reformed line-up. A new world record. And hard on the heels of their lauded last album, Fury (2020), all those years and all that experience again explode in another blaze of high powered, high calibre heavy metal.

Since 2018’s Unbroken, it’s been quite remarkable how the band’s adoption of aggressive, driving rhythms; unobtrusive percussive thumps and prominent bass lines have been slickly streamlined, reminiscent of classic bands like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin.

The result is an entire album of un-reinvented wheels, armed with dark and profoundly dramatic lyrics and melodies. Heavy metal to remember.

Always a fine guitarist, Boulton nowadays plays with hard earned authority and the kind of invention that only comes from experience. A perfect match with Wiggins’ cleverly calibrated melodic metal axework.

Add Marsh’s powerful, swaggering vocals and we get a gloriously unfettered mix of artistic and commercial heavy metal.

Nine of the fourteen tracks are 5 minutes or more in duration. But they all seem over in moments.

It begins with the power chord nirvana of ‘Feeding The Rat’, a fist pumping confessional with considerable emotional power.

‘Moth To A Flame’ and ‘We Burn’ not only amplify Marsh’s profile as a heavy hitter vocalist, as a lyricist they reveal a raw expression of his life and times.

The dazzling, twinned axework pieces (between Boulton and Wiggins) are utterly inspired. ‘The 47’ and ‘Soldier On’ are ignited by the guitarists’ eminently melodic axework, trading licks with Marsh’s searing vocals.

That said, arguably, two slower tracks are the album’s standouts.

The sinister , dramatic narrative of ‘Man On The Stair’ and ‘The Enemy Within’ inject actual menace into a genre where gutteral growls and faux satanism pass for scary stuff.

Each is a six minute mini masterpiece. Each is as heavy as a heavy thing. And each has a vague Guns’n’Roses meets Whitesnake air of commerciality.

Say no more. ****1/2

Review by Brian McGowan

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

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Featured Albums w/c 9 December 2024

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14:00-16:00 The Best of 2024 (Singer Songwriter)