ANTHEM 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.

To close their 2026 touring, two nights billed as "DESTROY THE BOREDOM 2026 EXTRA" were booked at NEW SIDE BEACH!! in Shin-Yokohama, on 5 and 6 December 2026.

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

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.