TIGHTROPE

Tightrope is Anthem's second studio album, released on 21 April 1986 on King Records' Nexus label, the vinyl edition as K28P-628. It runs a little over thirty-seven minutes. It was the first Anthem record made with a foreign producer, Ken Casey, and it followed the debut by only nine months. Hard touring had given the band a tougher groove, and Eizo Sakamoto, who had joined shortly before the first album, had grown a great deal as a singer; by Anthem's standards a fair number of the songs here are Yoya Fukuda's. The mix caused an argument: Naoto Shibata has said he told Casey the demos sounded more like the band and asked for the work to be done again. As with the debut, the album appeared first on vinyl and cassette, with the CD following a month later, on 5 May 1986, with "Back Street Groove" added as a bonus track. The opening song, "Victim In Your Eyes", was issued at the time as a promotional flexi disc given away with the magazine Burrn!, and "Light It Up" was used in the anime Devilman: The Birth. The 2005 remaster added five tracks, among them the previously unreleased "Still I'm In Chain".