ENGINE

Engine is the fourteenth Loudness album, released by Rooms Records on 7 July 1999. It is the third record by Takasaki, Yamada, Shibata and Homma, and the last studio album that line-up made. Its thirteen songs — "Soul Tone", "Bug Killer", "Black Biohazard", "Apocalypse" — take the groove-led direction opened by Ghetto Machine as far as it went. Two years later Akira Takasaki gathered the four original members again and the band restarted. Engine is the clearest statement of where Loudness had been heading across the five years from 1994 to 1999, a period later collected in full on the 2016 three-disc set Loudness Buddha Rock 1997-1999.