Hard Rock Reviews
As much as I like to call myself and this site Kevy Metal, my journey into music actually began with hard rock. Seventies and nineties hardrock – plus contemporary bands inspired by these styles – are still a significant part of what I listen to, and therefore, Album of the Week reviews on hard rock bands are published frequently. You can find all of them right here. Overlaps with my heavy metal reviews inevitably exist.
Looking for something specific, but can’t find it by browsing the reviews? Searching by artist name or release title using the search bar might bring up some Album of the Week reviews I have written before I started tagging my reviews properly.
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Album of the Week 29-2023: Halford – Resurrection
At the time when Halford’s debut album ‘Resurrection’ was released, it was frequently compared to ‘Accident at Birth’ by Bruce Dickinson, who had recently re-joined Iron Maiden. Both albums featured a return to heavy metal – with a somewhat modern bite – by iconic singers after a couple of years…
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Album of the Week 28-2023: ArkRoyal – Clymenus
ArkRoyal is a band that does things a little differently. Even superficially; the fact that their singer Illumina also plays guitar is quite an anomaly by Japanese rock standards, to the point where I might have thought it actually was illegal to do so for all-female bands – or visual…
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Album of the Week 23-2023: Mari Hamada – Soar
‘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…
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Album of the Week 20-2023: Arjen Lucassen’s Supersonic Revolution – Golden Age of Music
If carefully crafting massive prog rock operas is your day job, what do you do for fun? Well, if Arjen Lucassen’s new project Supersonic Revolution is anything to go by: playing rather spontaneous-sounding seventies-inspired hard rock with a bunch of relatively local friends. ‘Golden Age of Music’ is an often…
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Album of the Week 17-2023: Anthem – Crimson & Jet Black
Solid. Dependable. This may sound like a car commercial, but really, those adjectives describe Japanese heavy metal titans Anthem just as well. Since the early eighties, Anthem has been churning out quality heavy metal album after quality heavy metal album. Where many of their peers have had extended periods of…
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Album of the Week 16-2023: NoGoD – Now Testament
After their highly creative lead guitarist Kyrie left the band, I was not sure what to expect from NoGoD. Sure, they still had one of their greatests assets in the powerfully emotional vocals of Dancho – without a doubt one of the best singers in the visual kei scene –…
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Album of the Week 15-2023: Robert Plant – Fate of Nations
Moving on after the demise of a legendary band potentially poses a difficult dilemma for musicians. Many try to stick as closely to the formula of the band that made them popular, never allowing them to step out of the shadow of the band in question. Robert Plant somehow managed…
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Album of the Week 13-2023: The Alfee – Arcadia
Possibly the longest-running active rock band in Japan, The Alfee managed to maintain a sizeable portion of its popularity by simultaneously staying true to their core sound and developing along with the changing trends of the rock landscape. Despite starting out as Japan’s answer to the American folk rock scene…
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Album of the Week 12-2023: Kinniku Shōjo Tai – Gekkō Chū
Kinniku Shōjo Tai has a fairly sizeable discography of crazy, eclectic music. Because of that, it is difficult to pick a favorite or one to recommend to someone curious to begin with. If I was forced to pick one, however, it would be ‘Gekkō Chū’, the third release with what…
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