LOUDNESS Trivia — 18 Entries
18 sourced facts about LOUDNESS.
Trivia
Three times across twenty years, Loudness made the same album twice in two languages. Disillusion, from January 1984, was followed that July by an all-English version; Hurricane Eyes, released worldwide in August 1987, was followed that December by a Japanese-language one; and Racing, from November 2004, by an English version in April 2005. The band's own release index lists both halves of each pair as separate records.
Loudness began in 1981, when guitarist Akira Takasaki and drummer Munetaka Higuchi started the band after Lazy, the group they had both been in, broke up. Minoru Niihara joined on vocals and Masayoshi Yamashita on bass, making the four-piece that recorded the first album. The band's own site treats this as the starting point of everything that followed.
Straight after releasing their first album, The Birthday Eve, Loudness played their debut concert at the Asakusa International Theatre. The band's own site describes the performance as overwhelming and treats it as the point from which the group's reputation grew. For a band whose first record had appeared on 25 November 1981, it was a large hall to start in.
In July 1983 Loudness played their first shows on the American west coast and in Europe. According to the band's own site, people from Atlantic Records saw those performances, and what followed was the first worldwide multi-album contract ever signed by a Japanese band. The route abroad opened not through a pitch to a label but through the stage itself.
Thunder in the East, the band's first worldwide release, reached No. 74 on the Billboard album chart in 1985. The official site calls the placing exceptional for a Japanese band, and notes alongside it that the album stayed on the chart for nineteen consecutive weeks after entering. The second number is the more telling one: this was not a single week of novelty but more than four months of sales.
On the American tour supporting Thunder in the East, opening for Mötley Crüe, Loudness became the first Japanese band to play Madison Square Garden. The band's own site records it as a landmark. It came in their fourth year, on the first album they had released outside Japan.
The international edition, Lightning Strikes, went to No. 64 on the Billboard chart, above the No. 74 of Thunder in the East before it. The band's own site notes that it surpassed its predecessor. In Japan the same material had already been issued as a different product, under the title Shadows of War, resequenced and with one song exchanged.
In December 1988 Minoru Niihara announced he was leaving. The band's own site describes what followed as a run of line-up changes beginning with an American vocalist, and treats the whole stretch up to the 2000 reunion of the original members as one period. Across those years the band went through two other singers, two other bassists and one other drummer.
In 2008, after the release of Metal Mad, Munetaka Higuchi took leave for treatment of liver cancer. The band's own site records that he died six months later, on 30 November that year at 10:44 in the morning, aged 49 — the account gives the time as well as the date. He had founded the band with Akira Takasaki in 1981 and played on every album of both its first era and the reunion.
In 2013 Loudness founded Katana Music as both their own management company and their own label. The band's site gives the reason plainly: to build a firmer structure in which they could concentrate on playing. The Sun Will Rise Again came out through Universal the following year, but Sunburst in 2021 was the first album Katana Music released itself.
Days after Rise to Glory -8118- was released worldwide in January 2018, drummer Masayuki Suzuki suffered a stroke. The band brought in Ryuichi Nishida at short notice and kept touring. According to the official site, Suzuki returned to a stage that September, on the closing night of Metal Weekend at Zepp DiverCity, playing a single song and telling the audience he would make a full recovery however long it took. At Rock Beats Cancer Vol. 6 at the end of the year he played five.
The singer brought in to replace Minoru Niihara was the American Mike Vescera. The band's own album page quotes the description that followed him — a vocalist like a Marshall amplifier — and records that "You Shook Me", released as a single from Soldier of Fortune in 1989, went into rotation on rock stations across the United States. Vescera would later sing in Yngwie Malmsteen's band.
On the Prowl, released in 1991 for the band's tenth anniversary, has an unusual construction: self-covers of early songs that had never been issued abroad, re-recorded in English, with new material added. The official album page states that Mike Vescera translated Minoru Niihara's Japanese lyrics into English himself and sang them. That is how the fast "In the Mirror" and the ballad "Never Again" came to have a second form.
With the self-titled Loudness in 1992 the band rebuilt its sound. The official album page explains that Akira Takasaki produced it himself and moved away from the formal melodic style perfected in the 1980s, tuning down a semitone for something heavier. It is also the only studio album by that particular line-up, with Masaki Yamada of Ezo singing and Taiji Sawada of X on bass.
The self-titled Loudness entered the Oricon album chart at No. 2 in 1992, a result the official album page calls a major hit. It was an unusual showing for a record made immediately after the band's American contracts ended and both its singer and its bassist had changed.
On Heavy Metal Hippies in 1994 the band lost two players at once: bassist Taiji Sawada, and Munetaka Higuchi, the drummer who had been there since 1981. The official album page records that Hirotsugu Homma — Masaki Yamada's old colleague from Ezo — came in on drums, and that Akira Takasaki played the bass parts himself. The same page says the record also carries something of Ki, the solo album Takasaki was making at the time.
Sunburst, released in 2021 for the band's fortieth anniversary, is their first double album. The official album page introduces it as their twenty-ninth record and the first double one they have made. The limited first pressing added a DVD of the fortieth-anniversary concert Thank You For All, filmed at EX Theater Roppongi on 11 December 2020, presented complete and uncut.
The band's own member page shows that three of the current four — Akira Takasaki, Minoru Niihara and Masayoshi Yamashita — all come from the city of Osaka. Takasaki was born on 22 February 1961, Niihara on 12 March 1960, Yamashita on 29 November 1961. Only Masayuki Suzuki, the drummer since 2009, comes from elsewhere: Sapporo, and born on 26 September 1972, a good decade after the others.