METALLIAN - Tokyo Blade

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TOKYO BLADE - Same - POWERSTATION
Tokyo Blade has gone on to become something of a NWOBHM mainstay - via a lengthy hiatus or two as well as numerous line-up changes - since its debut album of 1983. The album has its moments and a definite NWOBHM vibe, but the act kneecapped itself due to several factors. The aforementioned line-up changes came fast and furious, the band was not signed with strong labels and, beyond the band's control, the debut album was issued in late 1983 which coincided with the British metal resurgence winding down. No matter the ultimate reason, Tokyo Blade, the album, is as indicative of the influences the Salisbury five had absorbed over the years as what heavy metal of the gods sounded like in that period.
This record is best summarised as vintage NWOBHM music. You know, that thin and naive, yet brash and driving metal sound that bands of the era exuded. Sure, comparisons to Maden, Leppard and Angel Witch are warranted, but we all know these bands all came through the ranks absorbing similar influences and then reproduced it in their music. Still, Powergame is occasionally too close at one point mid-track to Iron Maiden's debut for the band to claim mere shared influences as the culprit. Incidentally, some notable titles on the album are Killer City (Iron Maiden?), the melodic If Heaven Is Hell (Black Sabbath?), On Through The Night (Def Leppard?) and also Sunrise In Tokyo, which obviously nods to the band's monicker, before a silly ditty called Blue Ridge Mountains Of Virginia closes the album a cappella style. Perhaps the band had the hots for them hillbillies? Still, as far as familiar titles go, the band even had a song called Mean Streak (Y&T?) around the same time as the record.
The first song is the aforementioned Powergame - and the band's label was called Powerstation - and we get one Saxon-like solo and another that is Diamond Head-ish. The vocal is in the mid-range and the drummer is pounding his kit hard. Towards the end the song does an Unleashed In The East era Judas Priest, but ends exactly like Maiden. Break The Chains has a good speed-oriented riff, but is not the best song on offer. Alan Marsh's voice is pitched higher. The bass kicks in and the solo is extended and exciting. If Heaven Is Hell contains good melodies and is oh so vintage catchy metal. This is the type of song that makes a metal fan nostalgic even upon first listen. There are guitar harmonies and nifty soloing. The notes tell us that this is the one song where wwe hear (former) guitarist Ray Dismore. In contrast, On Through The Night is boring and the vocals suddenly strain. Whose idea was it to not scratch this one? And it's no less than seven minutes long! I much prefer the Def Leppard album to this song. Side B is next and where Killer City rewards the listener with good soloing, frenzied guitars and a bass that makes it through the mix, but it is that solo that is really everything here. The name is Killer City, but the refrain repeats "running wild." The average song is transformed by metal lead guitars. Stuff of heavy metal dreams. Liar is a liar because it begins with a bluesy guitar, as if it could be a ballad, but the song soon picks up. Track seven is throwaway, simplistic and, in fact, sounds like a Kiss tune. Skipping that, Sunrise In Tokyo might just as well be about the group and not the city given how the Japanese capital is probably something no one in the band had ever done at this point! Good riff, but something of an empty feeling isn't it? In fact, scan the lyrics and they have nothing to do with the metropolis. The drumming is impressive and the nifty solo pure Diamond Head! The album ends with, what's that?, a cappella of Blue Ridge Mountains Of Virginia! I guess the band had a good laugh at this or something, with that 'something' being cornering the inbred trailer park segment of the market (as if Republicans listen to heavy metal or any banjo-less music for that matter). This would be a reason to pick up one of the myriad of reissues of this album as opposed to the original. Older and wiser, the band dropped this ditty in subsequent editions.
The band's singer Marsh was gone right after this and not heard on the follow-up. Some say the label pushed for his dismissal. At the time, Andy claimed that the singer was not confident in himself and wanted out. While it's difficult to be certain, since Marsh immediately went on to other acts, the record company story becomes more plausible. He would eventually return, leave and return, but that is another story for another day
This album was also released over in the USA as Midnight Rendezvous (ironically dropping the 'Virginia' track). Either way, the album harbours more than a touch of Maiden and a whole bunch of NWOBHM standards, which is cracking. - Ali "The Metallian"

TOKYO BLADE - NIGHT OF THE BLADE - POWERSTATION
Night Of The Blade is Tokyo Blade's second album and first with singer Vic Wright. The band keeps up the Japanese imagery with an undead samurai ripping a Japanese flag on the cover, which is an odd deed for that warrior class.
Wright sounds more uncaged than his predecessor and has an impressive range. Available footage also indicates a good stage presence despite his lack of experience. There really was nothing wrong with the original singer so his departure was unexpected and after just one album. It is understood that the record company wanted him gone. It makes sense given how Night Of The Blade starts with the song Someone To Love, which likely signals a stab at commercialism. There is more where that came from, but the album is hardly bereft of heavy metal hard rock. Truth be told, it is almost always a bad thing when singers get swapped out at the behest of a record company capitalist. This one actually turned out rather okay.
The title track begins like Iron Maiden's Back In The Village. The songs were issued in the same year and it, surely, is a coincidence, as Tokyo Blade's song was probably recorded even earlier than Iron Maiden's as there was an earlier version of Night Of The Blade with the original singer recorded then discarded. It is unlikely that the bands heard one another's new songs. Rock Me To The Limit is as commercial as the title suggests and riddled with cliched phrases like, "rock and roll is here to stay.." For the record, this writer hates rock, rock and roll and the backing chants on the song. Every Tokyo Blade album must have a song referencing Japan and here the honour falls to Warrior Of The Rising Sun. Good song once it gets going; gets its history wrong with mentions of "rule all the land" or "claim his crown" though. There is a good solo and an even better guitar rhythm on the track.
Side B begins with Unleash The Beast and an extended soloing and whammy bar action. The speedy riffing is on point. Love Struck sounds like a Diamond Head song. Dead Of The Night too begins like Diamond Head. It has a slow start and the bass gets to be heard. It probably does not qualify as a ballad given the creepy backing vocals. Speaking of which, the vocals have an echo on them. Lightning Strikes is pretty commercial and the line "I'm hungry, think I'll raid the larder/I need attention like a little girl" made me laugh.
There are nearly 55 different versions of this album with different songs and bonus tracks and no one could possibly remember or sort all of it out. It is an impossibility. Just enjoy the music no matter the version. - Ali "The Metallian"

TOKYO BLADE - BLACKHEARTS & JADED SPADES - BANZAI
The third Tokyo Blade album that was released in 1985 is an odd proposition. It is a concoction of a NWOBHM band attempting to sound like MTV of the time and has a cover artwork that looks like a cautionary tale against dining at McDonalds due to massive tummy and hair loss consequences. Not to mention the potential of turning into a chimp. The guitars are dynamite, the singer wails, but the commercialism is blatant. In fact, the closest comparison for Blackhearts & Jaded Spades is the self-titled Vinnie Vincent Invasion album of the same era. As a reminder, that record featured former or future members of Kiss and Slaughter. Having said that, how would anyone know any of this? However, the subpar production is hardly crisp or expressive. It is fine as far as these things go, but the sound could have been much better.
From the get-go of Dirty Faced Angels the sound is thin. Songs like Make It Through The Night, Playroom Of Poison Dreams with its hard riff, and the brashly wild and animalistic Monkeys Blood are barnburners. In contrast, tracks like Dancing In Blue Moonlight, Loving You Is An Easy Thing To Do (which is surely inspired by Van Halen's Panama) and Undercover Honeymoon are certainly deliberately mainstream. The middle song's harmonica is unwanted and one hopes the band didn't pen the song for its cover model. The last song's guitars screech at least. Speaking of 'honeymoon,' the next track You Are The Heart with its saccharine backing vocals, could have been lifted off a Honeymoon Suite record. When will management learn that premeditated commercialism is the kiss of death for a metal band? Incidentally, the title track and Playroom Of Poison Dreams have a similar melody. Elsewhere, Tough Guys Tumble has cool guitars and a nifty bass. The aforementioned Loving You Is An Easy Thing To Do is most probably the band's idea of an inside joke. Its lyrics are lifted off multiple famous songs we have all heard.
Overall, as my rating demonstrates, album number three is not actually bad. It is, however, a letdown for a NWOBHM fan and is made worse because of a pedestrian production job and a blatant commercial bent. This would be it for new-ish singer Vic Wright. - Ali "The Metallian"

TOKYO BLADE - TIME IS THE FIRE - DISSONANCE
Tokyo Blade is an amazing band. The NWOBHM band has existed under this monicker since 1983 and even longer under other names. The band has had periods of dissolution, but has been active again since 2007 with most of its original line-up reassembled. Incidentally, while Japan has been a subject of fascination for the West, in general, and the metal scene, in particular, for years, surely Tokyo Blade is a forerunner of what is now an epidemic with every third band giving a nod to the Asian country. The Tokyo Blade guys must be rolling their eyes at the trendiness of it all. Yet, what is amazing, is how convincing, accomplished and serious the quintet is to this day. This is not a band of distracted part-timers riding a wave of nostalgia or taking its existence for granted just because they have been around. Clearly, Tokyo Blade is not resting on its vintage laurels either. Eat your hearts out Guns N' Roses, Pantera or Manowar. These guys have the new music, the power and the hooks on an album that clearly has been laboured on. Moreover, and to its credit, Tokyo Blade has both the authenticity of yore combined with contemporary sophistication to keep older fans and gain newer ones. That is a rare accomplishment. So far, this is an 80/100 mark on the Metallian scale. The album is imperfect, however, and we will get to that.
Let's tackle a number of the 14 tracks on offer. Moth To The Fire has a Dokken or Ratt feel, which is why it's one of the more hook-laden offerings. It is also catchy as hell. The guitars scream, but the vocals are the ones with the most attitude. Man On The Stair is hefty. The vocals are processed, however, even if the range of the singer impresses. The creepy female voice and time change, the fab solo and energetic drums add to the pile of goodness. It is a surprise how a mid-paced song can be so notable. It is also aptly the one with quite a time change. Are You Happy Now is the cut for the metal guitar aficionado. It has multiple guitars going off in a complex series of patterns. Going With The Flow is the power ballad, but not the only slow song. The synthetic drum sound comes to the fore here. The counterintuitively serious lyrics also come to the fore. The 47 is, unsurprisingly, about the Akoo incident in 18th century Japan. Metal De Facto had a song about the incident recently as well. This is the same event that inspired the beyond crappy Hollywood movie recently. Ironically, and regretfully, the song trots out the synthesizers! One thing the song confirms is how the vocals benefit from the elixir of youth. Seriously, hear the vocals and tell me they don't come from the throat of a twenty-year old. The Devil In You is the fast and heavy cut and shortest at 03:31. That guitar solos plain smoke. The rhythm bulldozes. Two consecutive titles are Don't Bleed Over Me and Written In Blood! The former begins with a backward track and is where the drum machine manifests itself explicitly (and disappoints). The latter is a rich mid-paced cut with a fine guitar solo as is its follow-up. Soldier On is notable for the vocals doing a very decent job of mimicking Phil Lynott. Heck the whole song, inclusive of the twin guitar work and even the bass, is Thin Lizzy. Coincidentally, one of Lizzy's more famous songs is called Soldier Of Fortune. "Love is a battlefield, " sings Alan Marsh and reminds one of Pat Benatar. Even more coincidentally, 'soldering on' is what Tokyo Blade is doing. The Six Hundred sings of the Battle of Balaclava of 1854 where approximately 600 soldiers charged the Russians. Tokyo Blade calls them "warriors". War is foolish and committing suicide is double foolish. Those soldiers were tools. Incidentally, this war and battle are the same ones covered in Maiden's The Trooper. Ramesses - yes Maiden had Powerslave - is the closing cut and is no less than eight minutes long. It is lengthy and makes the record even longer, but objectively it is a tribute to the band that, despite its length and an instrumental segment, it doesn't get long in the tooth.
A couple of the criticisms got worked into the above paragraph, but to be explicit, as much as the album is impressive and has the aforementioned virtues, it could have been shorter. The synthesizer should have just been kept out of it. The drums sound real (The Devil In You) or mechanical like a computer alternately. Finally, songs fade out like pop tunes. Kind of odd.
Having stated the pro and con, this album is anything but bad and would never be described as a hack job. The vocals - Byford meets Lynott - never phone it in, the songs are tight, the solos amazing; and the phrasing and meters never trite or lazy. It is 2025 and Tokyo Blade still has a few things to say. There is creativity to spare after all these decades. Sorry, "rock, rock 'til you drop" or whatever fanatics. Time Is The Fire - even the title makes one think - is slick and polished and much more than the rough 'n ready work of 1980s' Tokyo Blade, but the lads have neither lost the power nor the metal and remain true. The blade is sharp. As if the samurai on the cover had not made it clear from the get-go. - Ali "The Metallian"

Interviews

This was awkward. We will instead host Andy here on location at Metallian Towers next time. Andy being guitarist Andy Boulton of veteran NWOBHM band Tokyo Blade with whom Ali "The Metallian" was speaking on the occasion of the release of the Time Is The Fire album. Without getting into too much detail it was slightly challenging figuring the logistics of the interview out. With that settled, and out of the way, a video connection is established with the interviewee holding his device diligently in front of his mouth, while the interviewer had his ear mere centimeters away from his speakers the entire time. It was not quite Benny Hill, but it probably was Mr. Bean. Gratifyingly, Andy was a gentleman and a gracious interview partner and the result was productive. The guitarist was happy to answer any and all questions, be candid, take positions and the result is below for you to read. The band is Alan Marsh (vocals), Andy and John Wiggins (guitars), Andy Wrighton (bass) and drummer Steve Pierce. - 22.02.2025

METALLIAN: Do you recall the 12 Commandments In Metal compilation?
ANDY: I do remember it. Yeah. I think I've got a copy of it somewhere on vinyl, I think.

METALLIAN: I believe it only came out on vinyl. It was back in 1985-ish. The reason I bring it up is that is where I first heard Tokyo Blade. I got this compilation and came across Tokyo Blade.
ANDY: What was the song?

METALLIAN: Tokyo Blade's contribution was the song Fever. That was my introduction to the band and I still have the LP. With that said, I want to get to the current songs and music, but since I have you, I cannot resist but ask several questions that I've been asking myself for years.
ANDY: Okay. No problem.

METALLIAN: Andy, looking at Tokyoblade.com one sees a mention of the band having started out with the Killer monicker. Yet, there was a band called White Diamond before. What's the distinction?
ANDY: White Diamond was more of a covers' band. We really started writing our own stuff when we changed the name to Killer.

METALLIAN: What was the line-up for White Diamond?
ANDY: Oh, god. Well, Alan was in it, myself, Steve Pierce, Andy Robbins on bass and Ray Dismore on guitar, I think.

METALLIAN: That clarifies that. Where did the name Tokyo Blade come from? In conjunction, where did your Japanese influence come from because, right now in this scene, Japan is very trendy. Many people use Japan and samurai, etcetera as motifs nowadays. I know there was, Woman From Tokyo by Deep Purple and Midnight In Tokyo from Y&T, etc. Yet, regarding 'Tokyo Blade' where did this name and this fascination with samurai of Japan come from?
ANDY: It wasn't really down to a fascination with Japanese culture as such. We were trying to… we were sitting around trying to decide, we wanted to change the name of the band and we were trying to decide what to do. I wanted to call the band just Tokyo. Alan came up with the tie-in with the name Blade Runner, but, obviously, Blade Runner was a film, so I suggested Tokyo Blade because Alan liked double barreled names. So I suggested Tokyo Blade, and everybody went sort of quiet and thought about it and said, 'what does it mean?' I said, 'I don't know. It doesn't mean anything.' And that was it. That was how it came about.

METALLIAN: There's more to it than that because, obviously, you ran with the imagery, right?
ANDY: Well, we ran with the imagery because of the name that we'd come up with, but it wasn't initially, it wasn't really any sort of fascination with Japan per se. It was just that we came up with the name of Tokyo Blade. We just then went off on that Japanese culture thing, you know, purely because of the name of the band. It wasn't sort of done the other way round. It wasn't like we were really into Japanese culture and we decided to call the band Tokyo anything or Japanese anything. It was just that was how it came about.

METALLIAN: Did the band ever receive any outsized Japanese fandom or a reaction?
ANDY: Yeah. We were very well-known in Japan, but we never ended up playing there. Something happened everytime we were supposed to play there. Something went wrong and we never got to play there. So, I don't really know. I mean, I know that we were often in the big Japanese magazines like Burrn! and stuff like that. Other than that, I can't really gauge how big we were in Japan.

METALLIAN: Are you a fan of Blade Runner?
ANDY: It's not in my top ten movies, but it is a good movie.

METALLIAN: Andy, I want to get to the new album, but one more question first is about the line-up, the group. How did this line-up of Tokyo Blade, you guys, survive intact?
I know there have been many members in the interim. People have come and gone, but you five back together is quite an achievement in a world where people come and go on an almost daily basis. I mean, Iron Maiden aside, even with Judas Priest there's just two of them left.
ANDY: Well, there was a time when the band wasn't the current line-up. As you say, there were line-up changes. When we got back together, whenever it was, it was just that everybody was still… everybody wanted to, we've never, really had any sort of big falling outs. We've never had any massive disagreements or anything like that. So, we were just sort of happy to work together again and that's how it came about really.
You know, you're right in what you say. There are very, very few bands… In fact, I think we're one of the very few with the original line-up. If you take a band like Tygers Of Pan Tang, for example, there's only the rhythm guitarist left as an original member of the band, which I think is a bit weird because I don't really see how you can still go out as the Tygers Of Pan Tang if there's nobody in it except for the rhythm guitarist. But, hey, you know, they're doing it. So, best of luck to them.

METALLIAN: So, it's just a matter of you guys never being estranged.
ANDY: Yes. We all sort of stayed in touch and it just seemed right to do a sort of comeback and do a new album. I think when we did the comeback thing, we didn't realize that we had so many fans. We thought that it would just be a flash in the pan. It's just a one-off thing, but I'm happy to say that we're still making albums.
We've still got a record company. We've got fans, worldwide, who love the band. So, you know, our attitude… whilst we can still make albums, let's do it, you know?

METALLIAN: Is the band going to tour or play festivals? Are you remaining active? Do you guys live close to each other and have that cohesion?
ANDY: Well, Alan and I are the songwriters of the band, obviously, and we live very close together. So, it's easy for us to carry on writing. The rest of the band, unfortunately, are sort of split up. Most of them live quite a long distance from us. We've got no immediate plans for touring anymore or festivals. We have been asked, but, there's a lot of problems with that at the moment, which I won't go into too many of them. But, you know, one of the big problems is that we had a shit government that, you know, caused us to suffer Brexit, which means that Europe is a pain in the ass to play now. And there's other personal issues that mean that touring and playing live is very difficult now.

METALLIAN: When you said "shit government," you were referring to the previous Conservative government.
ANDY: The previous Conservative government, definitely. It's still early days for the new government. We haven't felt… I don't think we've felt much of a change in the new government at the moment. Time will tell.
Obviously, the political arena at the moment is really weird. You've got that maniac Trump. The man's a fucking idiot, doing his thing over there and just generally pissing everybody off. Our government, the current government, it's too early to tell whether they're gonna… the country was left in such a state, after the Conservative government, that it's a monumental task to try to get the country back on its feet. So as usual, it's the poorer people that suffer, as is the case in most countries. it's always the poorer people that suffer.

METALLIAN: I am not sure why you are insulting fucking idiots when you refer to Trump as a "fucking idiot".
ANDY: Definitely. And, obviously, he's managed to upset your government and your country, which again, the man's a fool. I mean, I was really totally amazed when he got back in again. I could not believe that the American people are that stupid but, I don't know I guess he's popular with people, I don't know who but, he must be popular with somebody. So it's just like watching a car crash.
I mean, every day the news comes on and the man's done something with his little puppet that he's got by his side there, which is, Elon Musk. It's remarkable. It is absolutely remarkable. You would never have foreseen that amount of nonsense and just abuse of power. It's incredible.

METALLIAN: Seeing is believing. Seeing that they reelected him, I have no kind words left for those people.
ANDY: No. No. Definitely not. It's literally beyond me. I can't begin to work out why they thought that he was the best. There's been a succession of American presidents that, you know, Joe Biden was okay, but, you know, he was old and losing the plot. So they needed to get Joe replaced, but replace him with Trump? I mean, that's a massive step backwards.. That's crazy. That's literally crazy. I guess enough people want the twat back so we're stuck with him.

METALLIAN: Something about the inmates taking over.
ANDY: Yes. Yes. The inmates taking over the asylum. Absolutely. That's what's happened there for sure. Hundred percent.

METALLIAN: Your prime minister is over there next week.
ANDY: Yeah, we'll see what happens there. The trouble with our current prime minister is that he doesn't really know what to do. He flip flopped. He's not strong. He's very characterless and ineffectual. He's not an ideal choice for a prime minister at all. Again, it was because the last lot was so bad that people just voted them in, just voted Labour in just to get rid of the last lot, which would have been alright if we'd have had a powerful figure to lead the Labour party. But Keir Starmer just goes with the wind, you know, whichever way. One minute he's gonna do this and then he's gonna do that, and you know he spends his entire time just trying to keep everybody happy and you can't do that. You're gonna piss off somebody and he just spends his time trying to just keep everybody happy which is weird. But there we are.

METALLIAN: You're calling him wishy-washy.
ANDY: Very, very, extremely.

METALLIAN: Seems we agree on a couple of things here, but let's talk about the album and a couple of the songs. What I realized as I was writing a review for the album is that no one in this band is phoning it in. This is not an album written by people who are saying, 'We've been around forty plus years. We're just gonna write another album and put something out there.' Where does this come from? After all these years and so many songs, you should be a little more blase about it.
ANDY: Well, I'm very lucky as I have my own studio set up here, which means it's very easy for Alan and I to write ideas and demo ideas. Even our record company says, 'you guys are so prolific.' You know, 'where do you find the time to do it?' So, we are very prolific. We are also very picky about what songs make it to the album. We've got dozens of songs that possibly might never see the light of day because we've listened to them and said, 'no, it's not good enough.' The main thing is that Alan and I have been writing for so long now that we've pretty much got it off to quite a fine art where we know what we wanna do, but at the same time, we don't want to just sit on past laurels. We don't wanna just sit there and write the same album twenty times.
We're always looking to do something a little bit different, a little bit new. When you're in a sort of a hard rock or heavy metal band, whatever you want to call it, you can't stray too far out of the genre without everybody getting pissed off. So you can't start putting Country & Western songs on there or anything like that. But, we do like to experiment and push things a little bit without coming out of the genre too far if that makes sense. We've been doing this for so long now, writing together, that it is weird because people have often asked, 'where did the idea for this come from?' or 'where did the idea for that come from?' and I honestly don't know. I don't know where it comes from. It's very strange. When you just sit there in front of your gear and then the next thing you come up with is a riff or a chord sequence then, right. Okay! Before you know it you've got a song together. Then I'll shoot that idea over to Alan. He's a very great lyricist and obviously a great singer. He will listen to the idea. He will quite often change things. So we'll come up with one idea and we'll record that and see what we think. Alan will quite often come back and say, 'no. I've got a better idea for the vocals than that.' So a lot of work goes into it, but it's something that we both enjoy. We're both very creative people and it's something that we enjoy doing. That's kind of all I can say on it really. I suppose that's about it.

METALLIAN: The album is longer than average. Are you saying that the number of songs is owing to the fact that you own your studio?
ANDY: It's partly down to that because it's much easier to to put songs together and get a good idea of what the song is gonna sound like when you can actually record it properly and listen back to it properly. So that does make life a lot easier. Back in the old days, we had a cassette player and that was it. And we didn't have a drum machine or anything. We just had the cassette player and we just had to just put ideas down and try to remember a week later what that idea was actually all about and where we were going with it.
The stuff is really mostly written by Alan and I. The other guys do have some input occasionally, but they are basically quite happy to leave it up to us.
We've got one particular fan, one particular French fan, who continually slags off every album that we do and only wants to talk about the first album and the second album. He's very much in a minority. I think he's very much on his own in his opinion. We've sort of said a thousand times, well, why would we want to… you know, Night Of The Blade was written about forty, I think, forty five years ago. Why would we want to be doing it in February 2025? I would be bored witless if that was all we were going to do! We wouldn't be doing it. We would be like, 'if we weren't capable of writing songs better than the stuff we did back then, then really we might as well give up.' We don't want to keep writing the same album. As I say, we want Tokyo Blade to have a distinctive sound as a band, which is obviously largely to do with Alan. he's got a very unique voice. You get a lot of these singers these days and you can't tell who's singing. It could be anybody.
So because of Alan, we've got a very distinctive sound and, why not use all the tools that you have at your disposal to craft the best songs that you can? That's kind of where we are with it really.

METALLIAN: Is this French person simply a lone fan or are you referring to some institution?
ANDY: No. It's just a lone fan who pops up on our Facebook page every so often and just comes out with stuff like 'oh, they've got a new album coming out. I won't be buying it and all the rest of it.' We're like, well well, don't.' You know, nobody's asking you to! The thing with people that criticize stuff is, as I've always said, I don't care. If you don't like it, the answer is simple.Don't listen to it. If you like it, great. If you don't, fine. Just don't listen to it. Go and listen to something else. There's no point in just sitting there slagging off somebody that's put a lot of work into something. Just leave it. Just say, 'I don't particularly like it' and that's the end of it. Yet, you get people that seem to… there are people out there that seem to think that we should be writing the same album that we wrote forty, forty five years ago, in 2025. Well, no, sorry, we're not interested in that. Carry on listening to the first and second albums if that's what you want to do, but other than that we're just gonna carry on doing what we wanna do.

METALLIAN: I identify with your fan, in a sense, because there are many bands where I only like their first or second album or first and second album. That's fine as you're saying, because as a fan, I notice there are bands that completely wimp out. Metallica is a perfect example. Yet, it's not like you guys, as you said, are Country & Western today.
ANDY: You get some people that say - the guy from the record company for example - he said that he thought that this album was more aggressive than Fury (of 2022). Well, I don't think it is and Alan doesn't think it is. Everybody's entitled to their opinion. Everybody's entitled to a view and everybody's entitled to listen to stuff they want to do. And I agree with you normally, with a lot of bands, you get the first couple of albums that are good and then it kind of just tails off. You get bands like AC/DC that have written the same album fifteen times, which again it's I don't have a problem with that because there's only so much you can do with the the type of music that AC/DC play, which is sort of power of blues really, there's only so much you can can do with that and the fans expect the next AC/DC album to sound like AC/DC so they kind of, in a way, painted themselves into a little bit of a corner. Whereas the bands that I really admire, the bands from the old days were the bands that broke the mold. So, Queen, for example, the first two albums are very heavy. The next album started going off a little bit. Then they started doing all sorts of stuff, but basically they were like, 'we're just gonna do what we wanna do. And hopefully people will like it.' People obviously did. And Led Zeppelin, the first first two albums were… the third album was quite different from the first two. So, I don't think there's anything wrong with pushing the boundaries a little bit and saying well let's do something new, let's try something new, which is what we try to do, but we try to keep it in that pocket to a certain extent so we don't we don't release many ballads or stuff that. It isn't us. We don't try to be too commercial. I think we just write what we wanna write. It's as simple as that. There's no game plan. There's never a game plan!

METALLIAN: You mentioned proximity. Do you and Alan still live in the Salisbury area?
ANDY: Well, we live in Salisbury or just outside Salisbury in Wiltshire, which is sort of South Southwest. Sure.

METALLIAN: Sure, I've been there. I've been to Salisbury, the cathedral, Stonehenge and the Cheddar Gorge.
ANDY: Alright. Okay. Well, Stonehenge is about, from where I live, Stonehenge is about two miles, two or three miles. I've been here all my life.

METALLIAN: I noticed that the Time Is The Fire and Fury album covers are related. Are they AI imagery? Is that something that you've created via AI?
ANDY: No. If it's… well, I say no. It was given to whoever the record company used to do the artwork and whether there's AI being used in it or not I don't know. I think AI is really good for that kind of thing. I don't know much about AI so I don't know how specific you can be. Since the album was called Time Is The Fire, we wanted the same character that was on the cover of Fury, which is the robot kind of terminator samurai thing. we needed the clock of time in the background. I guess you can do that with AI. I don't know.
I mean Fury definitely wasn't done with AI. That was done by our old art guy that used to do all our artwork, but he doesn't do it anymore. So, we were left sort of to find somebody that could do it and the record company got a guy, but I wouldn't have a problem using AI.

METALLIAN: Alright. Let's get to a couple of specific songs I want to ask you about. Perhaps my favourite is Man On The Stairs. This one is a little mysterious and creepy. What is this song about?
ANDY: Yeah. Sure. It's based on a quite well-known poem. And the poem is Yesterday, Upon The stairs, I Met A Man Who Wasn't There, He Wasn't There Again Today. I Wish, I Wish He'd Go Away. It is creepy. It sounds very creepy, but the original poem is about a guy who, it kind of looks not so much as himself on the stairs, but looks in the mirror and doesn't recognize himself because time and age have taken their toll. So that's really what that's about. We just made it sound ultra creepy and dark.

METALLIAN: Who's the female vocalist?
ANDY: They're two girls that are friends of mine who live fairly close by and I asked them if they would come and do the vocals on the album, which they kindly agreed to do.

METALLIAN: So they are not professionals. These are just friends.
ANDY: They are professionals and have their own band, which is called Miller's Daughter. They're both very good musicians. They both play guitar and sing very well and harmonize together. Completely different stuff than what we do. Their stuff is country oriented. They are called Miller's daughter.

METALLIAN: Let's talk about Are You Happy Now.
ANDY: I think that is about… it stems from a thing that our mothers say. It's an English thing. It's a thing that our mothers used to say. So if, for example, when you're a child and you tend to do things that children do, which is stuff that you shouldn't be doing; for example, if you were messing around with something at home and your mum said to you, 'if you keep doing that, you're gonna break it' and then eventually you break it your mother would say, 'are you happy now?' Meaning, basically, right you've now gone and done what I've told you not to do, but now it is broken, and you can't mess around with it anymore because you've broken it.

METALLIAN: What about The Six Hundred, which is about the same topic as Maiden's The Trooper?
ANDY: It is. It's about the Charge Of The Light Brigade at the Battle Of Balaclava, which is based on a famous poem written about it. I think our take on it was a little bit different because our take on it was more the fact that those men were sent to their deaths because they were governed by idiots. You know, the usual old saying that generals sit at the back of the battlefield, out of the way, out of harm's way and order the men to their deaths. Then shit happens. So many people die because of the stupidity of their leaders.

METALLIAN: There is a line from Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon about the general in the back, "Forward he cried from the rear/And the front rank died…"
ANDY: Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Exactly. It rings a bell. And War Pigs by Black Sabbath.

METALLIAN: Did you have any hesitation picking the topic given that The Trooper is so famous?
ANDY: No. We don't worry about what other bands do. We don't really take much notice of other bands. We just do what we want to do. It was just an inspiration from watching, from watching a movie, about that very thing. That's where we draw a lot of our inspiration from. Alan writes the lyrics, but he draws his inspiration from films, from current events, from politics; his political views of what's going on in the world. We're not the sort of band to say, 'oh, we better not write that because somebody else has done it.' There are plenty of bands that have written about plenty of things. You're going to get a crossover where somebody writes something. For example, Ramesses on the album, again, you could say, 'oh, well Dio wrote a song called The Chains Are On, which was about Egypt.'

METALLIAN: There's Iron Maiden's Powerslave.
ANDY: Yeah. Powerslave. Our take on it was about Rameses because he was a very well-known pharaoh, who had a tendency to get his name put on all sorts of things that he didn't actually have anything to do with. So if he saw something that was wonderful the workers were instructed to put his cartouche on there and put his name on it.

METALLIAN: Was he Donald Trump?
ANDY: Yes, yeah very very similar… Donald Trump of his day. And again, that's based on the poem by (Percy) Shelley, which is a famous poem. The inspiration for that came because I was watching Alien: Covenant.

METALLIAN: The alien sequel.
ANDY: Yeah. Yeah. At the beginning, in one of the scenes, he talks about, David, he talks about the statue of Ramesses and Ramesses had this great big statue built and said this will live and will make me immortal. I'll live forevermore because of this statue, but nothing lives forever. Nothing stays the same. Statues get broken, they get torn down; they get worn away. You know, everything's got an ending to it. Ramesses believed that that particular statue would make him immortal.

METALLIAN: A couple of minutes ago you mentioned that the band does not sound like anyone else. I mostly agree with you, but there's one song I want to draw your attention to which made me think of another band. That song was Soldier On, which made me think vocally and musically of Thin Lizzy.
ANDY: It's funny you should say that because there are a few people that have drawn that comparison. It's a comparison that we're really happy with because Alan and I were both Thin Lizzy fans. Phil Lynott (of Thin Lizzy) actually died in at Salisbury Hospital.
So did Paul Di'Anno, actually. He died in Salisbury. We've had a few famous people that have died here.
Phil was a fantastic lyricist and Lizzy was a great band and a big influence on Alan and I. They were a massive influence on Iron Maiden. People forget that. You know, people think that Iron Maiden is very original. They're actually not. They were influenced by the same people as we were, which was UFO and Thin Lizzy. If you look back to the early UFO days and you see Pete Way with his stripy trousers on, you know, really as a front man on the bass show up there with the vocalist, you can see where that's that's come from. The twin guitars, that was a Lizzy thing, a Thin Lizzy thing. Lizzy didn't start it. They weren't the first band to use harmony guitars, but they were certainly the first band to really popularize that style of playing.
The song did come out sounding very much like Thin Lizzy, which again, we could have said, 'oh, you know, that sounds a bit like Thin Lizzy,' but we're like, 'fuck it. It's a great song. It sounds good. Fuck it. We don't care.' You can call it a tribute if you like. It doesn't bother us at all.

METALLIAN: Did you know Phil Lynott by any chance? Did you ever meet him?
ANDY: I did meet him, but very, very briefly. That was when he was in another band called Grand Slam. They played at a local venue in London where one of the guys that was connected with us was sort of in charge of booking the bands. It was a very brief… it was not really a conversation. It was just kind of 'hello' and that was it. Lynott was very drunk. So famously so, right? Yeah. He was on his way out. He actually looked like… it wasn't long after that that he passed away. He looked really bad. He was probably drugged up as well. So it's a shame. It was a real real shame to see your heroes when they're in that kind of condition. A lot of people get addicted to drink and drugs and all that shit.

METALLIAN: Speaking of which, did you know or meet Paul Di'Anno?
ANDY: Yes. Yeah. A couple of times. To me, as far as I'm concerned, the best album that Iron Maiden ever did was Killers.

METALLIAN: That's my opinion as well.
ANDY: Yeah. I think that's the best album they ever did. It was a great album. The sound was great. The songs were great. Paul had, again, a difference to his voice. He didn't sound like anybody else. And when Bruce came in there's so many people now that sound like Bruce. I'm just not really a fan.
I'm not really a fan of Maiden at all, but the early albums, particularly Killers… That was, to me, that was a great album. In actual fact, if I do listen to Maiden, which is very rare, but if I do listen to them it would be Killers. Yes. That's definitely my favourite.

METALLIAN: It's a wilder album in my opinion. Earlier, your signature pointed to a website that, by the way, doesn't exist anymore and is defunct, about native progress Could you tell me about that?
ANDY: Well, I've always been, I've always had a real empathy towards native Americans. I ended up getting involved in that charity, which still exists. The charity still exists. Maybe the link's changed now. I ended up marrying. I spent a lot of time in America and ended up marrying an Apache and then really got really involved before I ever even met her. I was involved with the charity because it's a classic example of an entire race of people being bullied into giving up their land and giving up their ways and their way of life by white settlers. Again, all over it's all about money, well, all about religion and money.
You know, unfortunately, America hasn't really changed very much. It's still very much a nation obsessed by money and how much everything is worth and what they can get out of it. It's just a very sad thing; very sad state of affairs.

METALLIAN: Which years were you living in The US?
ANDY: Well, I was back and forth a lot. So it would have been, oh god, probably kicked off about ten years ago and I was back and forth. I spent a lot of time over there. Then I was back over there again and then back for a bit. So, I wasn't an official resident. I spent a lot of time there.

METALLIAN: Andy, is there any news to bring to the attention of the readers?
ANDY: We're currently, Alan and I, currently working on the next album. We're about six or seven songs into it already! There is talk, which is a possibility at the moment as nothing has been finalized, but there is talk of an interim album coming out, which would feature some unreleased stuff that we've done, including a couple of ballads funnily enough. That came about because our record company said that they wanted to do something and did we have anything kicking about as far as unreleased material?
I sent them the unreleased material, and they said they'd like to do an album. One of the bits of material that I've got is actually a live recording from back in 1984 of us at the Earthquake Festival. The first big festival we did was the Aardschok festival. That was with Metallica and Venom. That was the first big one we did and then we did the Earthquake festival. It's quite rough because, obviously, it was recorded from the crowd by somebody probably with a cassette player. So, the quality isn't great, but it's one of the few live recordings of us that exists.

METALLIAN: Is this before or after the Night Of The Blade album?
ANDY: This is after Night Of The Blade.

METALLIAN: Okay, and the rare material, the unreleased materials, and the two ballads, which era are they from?
ANDY: Oh, they've been kicking around for probably five years.

METALLIAN: Is there a timeline potentially for such a release?
ANDY: We've got nothing confirmed yet. It is an idea the record company is kicking around.

METALLIAN: Andy, why is Metallian the very best site for heavy metal?
ANDY: It's the very, very best site for heavy metal because Tokyo Blade says it is.

The 2025 album by Tokyo Blade is called Time Is The Fire and available through Dissonance Productions. The band's website is here.

If you enjoyed this, read Blitzkrieg

Tokyo Blade