With roots stretching back to those heady days of 1979, things really started moving for these Wiltshire rockers when they adopted the name Tokyo Blade in 1982. Their eponymous debut album released the following year was a feisty affair that foreshadowed the coming thrash metal storm, but when Metallica & Co. took heavy metal to new realms it felt as if Tokyo Blade and their NWOBHM counterparts were forever playing catch-up. However, Tokyo Blade were always more versatile than their peers and despite a mid-career wobble, have released a series of albums that could rival those of more commercially successful bands. Fanning the flames of their recent good form, Time Is The Fire evidences a group with plenty of fuel in the tank and much to prove.

Despite a lengthy career, Tokyo Blade still have the fire in their collective bellies and indicative of this is opening track ‘Feeding The Rat’. There’s no time to waste on elongated introductions or suchlike, just a chunky riff that rolls in on tank tracks and then the band are off, getting their head’s down to deliver an abject lesson in heavy metal. Vocalist Alan Marsh seems in particularly fine fettle and turns in a performance which finds his voice becoming an instrument in itself, entwining the guitars which in turn unleash the kind of solos you wish would carry on in perpetuity.

With the classic 1984 line-up back together and rocking this release, it feels as if Tokyo Blade have turned back the clock and are making the type of album they would have made four decades ago. As such, this record has a timeless quality and sounds as if this is the exact album the band wanted to make (rather than one which panders to fads and trends). However, while many of their early releases were marred by sub-parr productions, Time Is The Fire rectifies this and presents Tokyo Blade in clear, stereophonic glory. It’s a hard sound, but it’s also melodic, and that means that when the band follow-up the opener with ‘Moth To The Fire’, it does indeed feel as if they are wheeling out the heavy artillery. Less-than-hardy souls will be diving for cover, but those who like their metal with plenty of firepower will be donning their armour and joining the fight.

After two bombastic openers, Tokyo Blade ease off the pedal for a slower, more atmospheric number. It goes against the way music is consumed today, but it is exactly how an album should flow; it shouldn’t be a succession of blasts, but something that lifts you one moment and drops you the next, and that’s exactly what Time Is The Fire does. It flows like an old school album, and while it is perfectly feasible to dip in and out, it should be consumed as such to fully appreciate its ebb and flow. In our age of limited attention spans, an album of fourteen tracks might be hard to some to grasp but each of these cuts has its own unique personality with the mean and moody ‘Written In Blood’ rubbing shoulders with the power metal infused ‘The Six Hundred’, which nestles next to the high octane ‘We Burn’ quite effortlessly. It never veers towards the eclectic, yet it does create a constant motion, ensuring that things never become staid.

A truly epic track to bring the album to a fitting conclusion, ‘Ramesses’ is a fitting finale, but one which suggests there’s much more to come.

• Time Is The Fire is released via Cherry Red/Dissonance Productions on 17th January 2025.
• Official Website | Facebook | YouTube

Track List:

1. Feeding The Rat

2. Moth To The Fire

3. Man On The Stair

4. Are You Happy Now

5. The Enemy Within

6. Going With The Flow

7. The 47

8. The Devil In You

9. Soldier On

10. Don’t Bleed Over Me 

11. Written In Blood

12. The Six Hundred

13. We Burn

14. Ram