Hoist the Colours High

The latest studio album by Tokyo Blade, British metal veterans who stand among the defining names of the N.W.O.B.H.M. scene. Dissonance Productions released it overseas on 21 August 2026, on CD and as a double vinyl edition; Rubicon Music follows with the Japanese edition on 4 September as RBNCD-1474. The band debuted in 1983 and have been through many line-up changes without ever letting go of hard British riffing or a hook-led vocal line. They stopped in 1988, reformed in 2007 around guitarist Andy Boulton, and were whole again in 2017 when singer Alan Marsh returned for good. The five-piece is now Marsh and Boulton with John Wiggins on guitar, Andy Lytton on bass and Steve Pierce on drums. The record was built the way their recent ones have been, from the writing partnership of Boulton and Marsh working in Boulton’s own studio, and it arrives only eighteen months after Time Is The Fire with fourteen songs. The title carries the sense of going down with your own colours still flying, and it works as a statement of intent across the whole album. Lyrical twin guitars run alongside a hard-driving rhythm section throughout, in the straight line of British heavy metal the band have never left. "Screaming Evil" came out ahead of it.