ANTHEM
Biography and full studio discography of Anthem, the Tokyo band that has led Japanese heavy metal since 1985, with a page for every album from the debut to Crimson & Jet Black in 2023, including liner notes and the Japanese editions, on METAL BOOST.
Biography
ANTHEM
Biography
At a glance
Anthem are a Japanese heavy metal band formed in Tokyo in 1981 and led by the bassist Naoto Shibata. They made their major-label debut in 1985 with the album Anthem, on King Records' Nexus imprint.
Japanese metal in the 1980s was said to be concentrated in the west of the country; within that picture Anthem were known as Tokyo's leading band. They played in the United States in 1987 and broke up in 1992. Since restarting in 2001 they have never gone quiet for long, working steadily through albums and tours.
This site carries the band's twenty-one studio records, from 1985 to 2023. The band and their labels number the albums from the debut to Crimson & Jet Black of 2023 as the first to the seventeenth, and this article follows that count.
Formation and the debut — 1981 to 1985
Anthem formed in Tokyo in 1981 and made their name with performances of considerable heat and violence. On 21 July 1985 King Records' Nexus label released their debut album, Anthem, produced by George Azuma, formerly of 5X and a close associate of Loudness. The record was marketed under the slogan Power Metal Martial Law.
The line-up was Naoto Shibata on bass, Eizo Sakamoto on vocals, Yoya Fukuda on guitar and Takamasa Ohuchi on drums. The debut holds the songs the band was built on — "Wild Anthem", which takes its name from the band, along with "Warning Action!" and "Steeler" — all of which they still play. On 18 December that year came the mini-album Ready To Ride: two new songs and three from the debut re-sung in English.
The King Records years — 1986 to 1989
Tightrope, the second album, followed in April 1986. It was the first Anthem record made with a foreign producer, Ken Casey, and it came only nine months after the debut. For the third, Bound To Break, released in March 1987, the band worked with Chris Tsangarides, whose credits include Gary Moore and Thin Lizzy; it is the record most often named as the best of their early work. That same year Anthem played their first shows abroad, in Los Angeles, and the live album The Show Carries On! was recorded there.
Eizo Sakamoto left immediately after that tour. Yukio Morikawa, a singer of considerable power, replaced him, and two strong albums followed in quick succession: Gypsy Ways in May 1988 and Hunting Time in May 1989, both produced by Chris Tsangarides with Yoshitaka Mikuni guesting on keyboards. Between them they settled Anthem's standing as one of Japan's foremost traditional heavy metal bands.
Changes, and the split — 1990 to 1992
No Smoke Without Fire, the sixth album, appeared in March 1990. It was the band's first record made abroad, cut in London with Tony Taverner, with Don Airey of Rainbow guesting on keyboards. Yoya Fukuda plays all the guitar on it, but he told the band he was leaving in February 1990, once recording was finished. Needing someone who could step straight in, Anthem brought in Hideaki Nakama, then playing with Harry Scurry, that March.
Nakama himself left at the beginning of 1991. In August that year Akio Shimizu, then twenty, came to an audition through an acquaintance of Yukio Morikawa and got the job. Shibata, impressed by what he heard, decided that he would finish one album with this guitarist and then bring the band to an end.
The seventh album, Domestic Booty, was released on 16 March 1992. Morikawa told the band he was leaving that May, the split was announced, and Anthem played their last show in Tokyo on 10 July, closing a run of a little over ten years. The live album Last Anthem and the compilation Best II followed after the break-up.
Graham Bonnet, and the restart — 2000 to 2001
What brought the name back was a plan to make a record of Graham Bonnet singing Anthem songs. Shibata and Shimizu recorded fresh backing tracks for Bonnet to sing over, and the project appeared in April 2000 as Heavy Metal Anthem, with a Japanese tour behind it. That revived calls for a reunion.
Shibata's condition was that it not be a reunion in the nostalgic sense — no gathering of old members for its own sake — but a band living in the present and making new music. On those terms the first person he approached was Akio Shimizu; Eizo Sakamoto returned on vocals and Hirotsugu Homma joined on drums. The eighth album, Seven Hills, made by those four, appeared in August 2001.
Eleven years unchanged — 2002 to 2013
After Seven Hills the band made six more studio albums for Victor Entertainment: Overload in 2002, Eternal Warrior in 2004, Immortal in 2006, Black Empire in 2008 and Heraldic Device in 2011, with a European edition of Immortal in the autumn of 2007. For eleven years not one member changed, and across records and tours they kept proving that this was a working band.
In 2012, looking for firmer footing, Anthem moved to Universal Music Japan and released their fourteenth album, Burning Oath. Isamu Tamaru, then a guest, played drums on every track but one: Hirotsugu Homma had not left at that point, but an earlier accident had left him unable to recover fully to the standard Anthem's music asks for, and he departed later.
In 2013 Shibata played a session with Yukio Morikawa, the singer of the band's second era, and was struck again by his voice and by his commitment to the music. At the end of that year, thinking about what came next, Shibata talked the matter over with Sakamoto and decided to change singers.
Morikawa returns, and the wider world — 2014 to now
Morikawa came back, Isamu Tamaru became a full member after years of support work, and the line-up of Naoto Shibata, Akio Shimizu, Yukio Morikawa and Isamu Tamaru was complete. Absolute World, the fifteenth album, arrived in October 2014. In 2015 the band marked thirty years since their debut with a successful anniversary tour, and the sixteenth album, Engraved, followed in June 2017. A documentary film covering 2017 was released in February 2018, and two more concert films in December of that year.
On 29 March 2019 Anthem became the first Japanese act signed to the German metal label Nuclear Blast and released Nucleus, their catalogue re-recorded with English lyrics, worldwide on the same day: Nuclear Blast in Europe, Golden Robot Records in North America, Australia and New Zealand, and Ward Records in Japan and the rest of Asia. The following month they played the Keep It True festival in Germany. In 2020 they made another record with Graham Bonnet, Explosive!! -studio jam-.
April 2023 brought Crimson & Jet Black, their seventeenth album and their first new material in six years, released worldwide, sung entirely in English and placed at No. 14 on the Japanese weekly chart. In 2025 the band marked forty years since their debut with Breathing Real ~40years of Anthem~, a four-disc compilation running from the King Records era to the present.
Members
| Name | Role | Years |
|---|---|---|
| Naoto Shibata | Bass | 1981-1992, 2000- |
| Akio Shimizu | Guitar | 1991-1992, 2000- |
| Yukio Morikawa | Vocals | 1987-1992, 2014- |
| Isamu Tamaru | Drums | 2014- (support from 2012) |
| Eizo Sakamoto | Vocals | 1985-1987, 2001-2013 |
| Yoya Fukuda | Guitar | 1985-1990 |
| Takamasa Ohuchi | Drums | 1985-1992 |
| Hideaki Nakama | Guitar | 1990-1991 |
| Hirotsugu Homma | Drums | 2001-2013 |
Discography on this site
| Year | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | CRIMSON & JET BLACK | Studio album |
| 2020 | EXPLOSIVE!! -studio jam- | Studio record with Graham Bonnet |
| 2019 | NUCLEUS | Re-recordings, sung in English |
| 2017 | ENGRAVED | Studio album |
| 2014 | ABSOLUTE WORLD | Studio album |
| 2012 | BURNING OATH | Studio album |
| 2011 | HERALDIC DEVICE | Studio album |
| 2008 | BLACK EMPIRE | Studio album |
| 2006 | IMMORTAL | Studio album |
| 2004 | ETERNAL WARRIOR | Studio album |
| 2002 | OVERLOAD | Studio album |
| 2001 | SEVEN HILLS | Studio album |
| 2000 | HEAVY METAL ANTHEM | Project album, sung by Graham Bonnet |
| 1992 | DOMESTIC BOOTY | Studio album |
| 1990 | NO SMOKE WITHOUT FIRE | Studio album |
| 1989 | HUNTING TIME | Studio album |
| 1988 | GYPSY WAYS | Studio album |
| 1987 | BOUND TO BREAK | Studio album |
| 1986 | TIGHTROPE | Studio album |
| 1985 | READY TO RIDE | Mini-album |
| 1985 | ANTHEM | Studio album (debut) |
Live albums, singles, compilations, box sets and video releases are outside the scope of this site's catalogue.
A note on sources
The band's history and current line-up come from the About page of their official site, heavymetalanthem.com. Release dates, labels and running orders were taken from that site's own product pages, from the commentary King Records published on its hard rock and heavy metal site (kings-rock.jp) for the 2015 thirtieth-anniversary Nexus box, and from MusicBrainz release data for artist b4a99553-a46f-40e7-b371-ba144b5859f3, with the three checked against each other. Personnel changes in the early years and the producer credits were researched through the Japanese Wikipedia article as an entry point; only facts also carried by the official site, by King Records or by MusicBrainz are stated here. Every music video was checked for the channel that uploaded it; no fan re-upload is included.
Trivia
Japanese heavy metal in the 1980s was described with a weather metaphor — high pressure in the west, low in the east — meaning that the strongest bands were gathered around Osaka and Kyoto. Writing about that period, King Records places Anthem within it as the leading band of Tokyo, which says something about how the group was heard at the time.
Anthem formed in Tokyo in 1981. The About page on the band's own site describes a group that made its name through performances of considerable heat and violence before reaching a major label, and dates that major-label debut, the album Anthem, to 1985 — four years after the band came together.
The debut album Anthem was marketed under the slogan Power Metal Martial Law. King Records quotes the phrase on its own hard rock and heavy metal site, and in the biography further down the same page writes the album's title as Anthem - Power Metal Martial Law, so that the advertising line ended up attached to the record as if it were part of its name.
From the third album, Bound To Break, in 1987, Anthem worked with the producer Chris Tsangarides, whose credits include Gary Moore and Thin Lizzy. He went on to handle Gypsy Ways, Hunting Time and Domestic Booty as well, covering most of the band's King Records output. Thirty years later he worked on the mix of Engraved, and an interview with him appears on the video content of that album's limited first pressing.
Bound To Break appeared in March 1987, and that June Anthem played abroad for the first time. King Records' biography places those shows in Los Angeles and notes that the live album recorded there, The Show Carries On!, followed within the same year. In the United States their studio albums were handled by Restless Records.
Eizo Sakamoto left immediately after the Bound To Break tour. The band's own site says his replacement was Yukio Morikawa, a singer of considerable power, and the first album with him is Gypsy Ways of 1988. Sakamoto was called back when the band restarted in 2001 and sang with them again until 2013.
The guitar on the sixth album, No Smoke Without Fire, is played throughout by Yoya Fukuda, but Fukuda told the band he was leaving in February 1990, once recording was over. King Records' biography says that Anthem, needing someone who could step straight in, brought in Hideaki Nakama that March, from the band Harry Scurry — so the guitarist on the record and the guitarist who toured it were not the same man.
No Smoke Without Fire was the first Anthem record made outside Japan, cut in London. King Records' notes give the producer as Tony Taverner, whose credits include Nazareth, and record a guest appearance on keyboards by Don Airey, formerly of Rainbow — an early instance of a player from abroad joining an Anthem session.
News
BRING ME THE HORIZON's OLI SYKES And SPIRITBOX's COURTNEY LAPLANTE Join GRABBITZ For Valorant Champions Anthem 2026
Riot Games announced the three as performers of the 2026 Valorant Champions Tour anthem 'If The Sun Burns Out Tonight'.
RUSH To Release "2112 (50th Anniversary)" And "The Spirit Of Radio: Greatest Hits 1974-1987" In October
Both arrive October 2 via UMe/Mercury and Anthem Records: a 50th-anniversary liquid vinyl edition of 1976's "2112", and the first-ever vinyl release of the 2003 compilation.
Devil Master Pay Tribute To Japanese Hardcore Legends G.I.S.M. With “Death Anthem”
Their new album “Bloody Dreams” is out September 4 via Relapse Records.
Play MVCurrent Members
Current line-up as published by the official site, verified on 2026-09-14.
Albums
Crimson & Jet Black is Anthem's seventeenth studio album, released on 21 April 2023. It is their first album of new material in about six years, sung entirely in English and released worldwide on the same day, and it reached No. 14 on the Japanese weekly chart.
Explosive!! -studio jam- is credited to Anthem featuring Graham Bonnet and was released in 2020. It grew out of a friendship of more than twenty years: eight songs recorded in Tokyo, drawn in roughly equal measure from Anthem's own catalogue and from Bonnet's.
Nucleus, released worldwide on 29 March 2019, gathers Anthem songs re-recorded with English lyrics throughout. It followed the band becoming the first Japanese act signed to the German label Nuclear Blast, and it is the record with which they began addressing an audience outside Japan.
Engraved is Anthem's sixteenth studio album, released on 21 June 2017. It is the second record made by the line-up that brought back Yukio Morikawa and added Isamu Tamaru, and it followed the thirtieth-anniversary tour that marked three decades since their 1985 debut.
Absolute World is Anthem's fifteenth studio album, released on 22 October 2014. It is the first record by the line-up that brought Yukio Morikawa back to the microphone for the first time since 1992 and made Isamu Tamaru a full member.
Burning Oath is Anthem's fourteenth studio album, released on 24 October 2012. It was their first for Universal Music Japan after leaving Victor, and Isamu Tamaru plays the drums on every track but one.
Heraldic Device is Anthem's thirteenth studio album, released on 6 July 2011. It was their last studio record for Victor Entertainment and the high-water mark of the line-up with Eizo Sakamoto and Hirotsugu Homma.
Black Empire is Anthem's twelfth studio album, released on 29 October 2008. The title track became one of the band's signatures: it was re-recorded in English for Nucleus in 2019 and Nuclear Blast released an official video of it.
Immortal is Anthem's eleventh studio album, released on 30 August 2006, with a European edition following in the autumn of 2007 - the point at which the reformed band began looking beyond Japan.
Eternal Warrior is Anthem's tenth studio album, released on 21 July 2004. The title track is among the signatures of the band's second era and was re-recorded in English for Nucleus in 2019.
Overload is Anthem's ninth studio album, released on 9 October 2002. It is the second record made after the band reformed, and its title track was re-recorded in English for Nucleus in 2019.
Seven Hills is Anthem's eighth studio album, released on 22 August 2001. It is the first record of the band's second era, restarted by Naoto Shibata nine years after the 1992 split on the condition that it be a band living in the present rather than a nostalgia act.
Heavy Metal Anthem, released on 21 April 2000, is the project album on which Graham Bonnet sings Anthem songs in English over backing tracks newly recorded by Naoto Shibata, Akio Shimizu and others. It led directly to the band reforming.
Domestic Booty is Anthem's seventh studio album, released on 16 March 1992. It is the first record with Akio Shimizu on guitar and the last studio album before the band broke up that July.
No Smoke Without Fire is Anthem's sixth studio album, released on 21 March 1990. It was their first record made abroad, cut in London with Tony Taverner, and it carries a guest appearance by Don Airey of Rainbow.
Hunting Time is Anthem's fifth studio album, released on 21 May 1989. Their third with Chris Tsangarides, it was made as the decisive record for the line-up built around Yukio Morikawa and is counted among the band's best.
Gypsy Ways is Anthem's fourth studio album, released on 21 May 1988. It is the first record with Yukio Morikawa as singer, and its title track and "Shout It Out!" became fixtures of the band's sets.
Bound To Break is Anthem's third studio album, released on 5 March 1987. Made with Chris Tsangarides, it is the finest of their early records; the band played in the United States that June, and it was the last album of Eizo Sakamoto's first spell as singer.
Tightrope is Anthem's second studio album, released on 21 April 1986. It was the first record they made with a foreign producer and it followed the debut by only nine months.
Ready To Ride is an Anthem mini-album released on 18 December 1985: two new songs plus three tracks from the debut re-sung in English, issued as a twelve-inch record.
Anthem is the band's debut album, released on 21 July 1985 on King Records' Nexus label under the slogan Power Metal Martial Law. It holds "Wild Anthem", "Warning Action!" and "Steeler".