Recently I shared a video on G+ and he liked it, it was about a live performance these guys made in 2005, it was the 20th Anniversary Tour. I'm gonna post some videos while talking about the band... you know, for educational purposes.
This is the 1st song of the show, Onslaught, from their album Eternal Warrior (2004). It show the current line up which is Shibata "Ski" Naoto on bass, Sakamoto Eizo on vocals, Shimizu Akio on guitar and Homma Hirotsugu on drums. After this song they played 9 other, and then they went out with a bang, as if the show was over... But wait.. the DVD cover said there was still other 17 songs to be played.
After a couple of minutes Shibata came out. Regretfully I cannot speak Japanese so I have no clue what he says, but I have a feeling he-s talking about the band and it beginnings... So he start calling people to the stage, who? Well the original members of the band. They played classic Anthem songs, the songs they used to play when that line up was active. For this "stage"of the show I-ve chosen to show you a song called Victim in Your Eyes, form the Tightrope album that came up in 1986. The line up for this song is Shibata "Ski" Naoto on bass, Sakamoto Eizo on vocals, Fukuda Hiroya on guitar and Ohuchi "Mad" Takamasa on drums.
The original line up released 3 albums and, in 1988, Sakamoto left the band and went to pursue his own proyect: Animetal, a band every anime & tokusatsu fan should listen to. Anyhow, they got Morikawa Yukio to replace Sakamoto and thus in the tour at this time Sakamoto left the stage and Morikawa joined the band and played some other song of his "era" with Anthem. This is Hunting Time, from the Hunting Time album (1989)
In 1990 Anthem dealt with another departure. Fukuda left the band and Nakama "Shadow Walker" Hideaki joined. This guy is hilarious by the way. This next song is from the album No Smoke Without Fire (1990), one of my favourite songs: Shadow Walk.
Nakama left the band after recording just that one album and the search for a new guitarist began. Good thing these guys found Shimizu Akio, perhaps the best guitar player the band have had, technically speaking of course. They released just one album though, Domestic Booty in 1992 and after this they disbanded. "Final" line up: Shibata "Ski" Naoto on bass, Morikawa Yukio on vocals, Shimizu Akio on guitar and Ohuchi "Mad" Takamasa on drums. This song is called Venom Strike.
The band took a rather long hiatus and then, on 2000, they were joined by the legendary Graham Bonnet and released an album, with him on vocals, that featured all the classics sung in English. Great stuff. Unfortunately I have no knowledge of them ever being in a live show, so I'll just leave 2 songs here: Gypsy Ways and Blinded Pain.
In 2001 original singer Sakamoto Eizo rejoined the band and Ohuchi Takamasa was replaced with Homma Hirotsugu. These were the guys we watched in the first video, so I'm not gonna post any more stuff about them, but I will recommend that you listed to songs like: Eternal Warrior, Rescue You, The Sign, Immortal Bind, Freak Out, Running Blood, DIM and I better stop before I name all of them. To close this up I will post 2 more videos, why? Because they are awesome. After the show was done they came back out... all 8 members and played 2 more songs. Here they are. Do You Understand, from No Smoke Without Fire, and Wild Anthem, from their very first album: Anthem.
I hope you've enjoyed this. No go back to the top and play the videos again and/or go get the albums. It's the power of Metal that compels you!
