Tokyo Blade - Time is the Fire (2025)

Country: UK
Style: Heavy Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 17 Jan 2025
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Tokyo Blade really aren't hanging about in the 21st century. This is the fourth album of theirs I've reviewed here at Apocalypse Later since 2018, which means that they're knocking them out pretty quickly. It's also fair to mention that none of them are short albums, Fury three years ago almost eighty minutes long and this not too far behind it. They're writing a lot of material, which is great, but it's telling that I gave Unbroken and Dark Revolution, two albums that run just shy of an hour each, 8/10s, but Fury and Time is the Fire, 7/10s. Had they been cropped more judiciously, maybe I might have stayed at an 8/10.

Then again, maybe I wouldn't. For an album with fourteen full tracks, there are precious few that I'd call standouts. Feeding the Rat is a decent opener with a good Tank-style chug, but it can't find the hooks I'd expect. Moth to the Fire is decent too, but nothing more. Are You Happy Now is only there, enough that I never seem to acknowledge it. However many times I listen through, Man on the Stair grabs me with its slower pace and more successful groove—it does run long though, just like the album, and it loses me by the end—and then The Enemy Within grabs me afresh, as if Are You Happy Now just isn't there in between them. It's like my brain refuses to let it register, even with tasty guitars in the second half.

The Enemy Within is the first of four highlights for me, but it's a surprising one. It has an epic feel to it, even though it's only four and a half minutes long, doing some of what Man of the Stair did a couple of tracks earlier but more successfully. I adore the delightfully elegant guitarwork, but it's more like a Queensrÿche song, especially in the verses, than a Tokyo Blade song. Is that bad? Well, yes and no, because it sets something of a trend. There's more elegant guitar on The 47, with Alan Marsh going for a Phil Lynott approach during the verses and the band behind him ending up in a sort of Canterbury-era Diamond Head vibe. As an old school Tokyo Blade fan, I've often compared other bands to them. It seems weird doing it the other way round so overtly.

The second highlight for me is The Devil in You, which takes this elegant technical eighties metal approach and bulks it up with a more modern backdrop. It's a heavy NWOBHM song with a strong Randy Rhoads-era Ozzy riff to anchor us in that timeframe, but there are Pantera moments there too. For something so rooted in the early eighties, it's also the most modern song anywhere to be found on this album. In fact, I'd struggle to find another example of a modern touch. There's some glam metal here, in songs like Written in Blood, that feel late eighties, like the Queensrÿche nods, but little newer.

The other two highlights delve into 19th century English poetry, so naturally end up with at least a hint of Iron Maiden in them. However, only one of them really follows a Maiden approach, which is The Six Hundred, a take on The Charge of the Light Brigade. Marsh sings lyrics borrowed from and subtly changed from Tennyson's poem and there's also a narrative section in the second half, just in case we hadn't noticed the Maiden influence. However, it's not the literary source that elevates it; it's the riffs and the hooks, those old fashioned touches that tend to make songs memorable.

Tennyson's poem came out in 1854 but Ramesses, the closer, delves back to 1818 to quote Shelley's Ozymandias during its intro. This may be the best song on the album but it's also one of the most derivative, building just like a Dio-era Rainbow song, right down to the middle eastern tinges, but with a firm eighties metal edge. It's always metal rather than rock, even with a progression taken from George Harrison's While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Again, the riffs work and the hooks work and there's some lovely dual guitarwork. I always want more of that on a Tokyo Blade album and the best examples are on Ramesses, just like it contains the best chugs and the best hooks.

There are other songs here, quite a few of them, but, as enjoyable as they are, few of them find a way of sticking in the brain like those highlights. I do like that Lynott vocal approach on The 47 and Soldier On, both opportunities for Marsh to really emphasise the stories he's telling with serious intonation. There are solid chugs on Feeding the Rat and We Burn. There's a nice heavy section on Going with the Flow, which otherwise plays in the Queensrÿche ballpark, perhaps appropriately as the song following The Enemy Within. It's not good, though, when my brain condenses a seventy-five minute album down to a quartet of standouts, especially when it does it during the album.

Bottom line, this is a good album but it's also much too long. Some of these songs surely should be B-sides of singles or songs that emerge on a bonus disc somewhere. There's too much here for it to not affect the overall rating. In fact, I may be a little generous in going with a 7/10 but I think I will stay happy with that. Nothing's bad. It's just that there isn't as much that's great as I was hoping.