DOMESTIC BOOTY

Domestic Booty is Anthem's seventh studio album, released on 16 March 1992 on King Records' Nexus label as KICS 172, produced by Chris Tsangarides. It runs a little under fifty minutes. Hideaki Nakama had left at the start of 1991 and a replacement was slow to appear. In August that year Akio Shimizu, then twenty, came to an audition through an acquaintance of Yukio Morikawa and got the job. Naoto Shibata, impressed by what he heard, had already decided that he would finish one album with this guitarist and then bring the band to an end, and that is the decision this record was made under. It opens with "Venom Strike" and goes on through "Gold & Diamonds", "Cry In The Night" and "Silent Cross", all of which the band returned to later; "Blood Sky Crying" and "Willesden High-Road" are instrumentals. Morikawa told the band he was leaving in May 1992, the split was announced, and Anthem played their last show in Tokyo on 10 July. The 1999 remaster replaced "Venom Strike" with the remix from Best II, and the 2005 remaster added that remix and an edit of "Renegade" as bonus tracks.