‘Soar’ is the most consistent Mari Hamada album in decades. While it features a similar elegant, bombastic power metal light style as her previous couple of albums, the songwriting is just better across the board, making ‘Soar’ a very entertaining listen throughout its entire runtime rather than just a couple of excellent songs usually clustered around the beginning of the album. And it’s not just the songwriting. Hamada’s voice is still in ridiculously good shape after all these years, her range bordering on mind-blowing at times. Add all of those advantages up and you have a winner of an album on your hands.

For those who don’t know: Mari Hamada was one of the first women singing heavy music in Japan, her first two albums being minor hard rock and heavy metal classics. This granted her the moniker of Japanese heavy metal queen, which I suppose is accurate, but also sells her short. She experimented with multiple pop and rock styles throughout the eighties, nineties and early 2000’s before settling on what is now her trademark style of quasi-symphonic, hyper-melodic power metal with ample room for her impressive vocal acrobatics. ‘Soar’ fits that description, but just does it better overall than its four predecessors did.

Hamada pretty much nailed the power ballad format early in her career already, but ‘Soar’ probably has the best collection of ballads she ever did. ‘Zero Gravity’ is a well-constructed, powerful track on which Loudness guitarist Akira Takasaki guests – you’ll hear it immediately when the solo starts – while closer ‘Last Leaf’ is slightly more subtle, but a gorgeous way to close an album. ‘Dancing with Haeartache’ finds middle ground between power ballad and dramatic eighties hardrocker and as such is one of the highlights on ‘Soar’. The unconventional chord structure of the song reminds me of early Queen.

It’s not just the ballads Hamada excels at. The album is full of excellent power metal songs, of which the particularly theatrical ‘River’, ‘Dramatica’ – tailor-made for Hamada’s voice and image – and the surprisingly old school ‘Noblesse Oblige’ are probably my favorites. ‘The Fall’ sounds uncharacteristically modern, with the rhythm guitars reminiscent of contemporary progressive metal, but is a dynamic track that suits Hamada’s voice just as well. ‘Diagram’ is a lighter rocker that would not have sounded out of place on one of Hamada’s late eighties albums, while ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’ is an excellent opener in that it sums up the overall sound of the album in an energetic manner.

Mari Hamada is an artist I have always appreciated, but ‘Soar’ is the first studio album of hers I have listened to front to back multiple times in a long time. Given that it doesn’t do that much differently than usual, that really emphasizes how good the songwriting is here. While I do think some of the songs would have sounded even more bombastic if the guitars were a little bit louder, ‘Soar’ is a must-hear if you like melodic, theatrical music with excellent vocals. Even the long list of famous guest musicians is of secondary importance to that.

Recommended tracks: ‘Dancing with Heartache’, ‘Noblesse Oblige’, ‘The Fall’, ‘Last Leaf’