Lightning
Road to Ninja

Japanese band Lightning has made a storming career in the home nation since their formation in 2006, now this colourful band have collected their best and compiled them into an album that has been rerecorded and translated to English. They have done several albums so they’ve had a good collection of songs to pick from now that they are looking to extend their swords into the real world, the world outside the islands of Japan. So, now they allow us to understand, or rather think that we do considering how poor Japanese tend to be when attempting to speak the English language. Of course to every rule there are exceptions and maybe the singer of this band is that exception.

It is power metal, lightning speed power metal – I think it might be very inspired by the European bands of that genre, especially as the members on the home page list their favourite artists and albums and European power metal have a high standing there. Of course there are variation in tempo and the man in Iron Chinos does not play his guitar at lightning speed all the way through the album’s eleven tracks. I think they have done well to keep playing time of such a compilation to a mere fifty minutes, usually bands have trouble killing darlings but I guess these guy’s swords are very sharp. The sound and production is great, very inspired by the European scene – then vocalist sounds very Japanese and his English is not the greatest I have ever heard. They have a good energy and drive in their songs and I think the album feels about right in playing time. I would describe it as a good production, although there is a surprisingly small ninja sensation to it.

I think this is a good album, maybe not fantastic or amazing but entertaining with strong songs and great energy and feel. However, one could want a little more exotic sound considering the fact that they are from a pace that is strange, remote and exotic to most people. It is fun though, that they end with a song where the lyrics are in Japanese, it adds some additional depth to the album. This brings up the language thing, the English vocals are quite poorly pronounced in many parts and that is a weakness, it would probably be less of a weakness had the album felt a bit more exotic and remote – it sounds a bit too European to me. It is interesting with music from different places but it is almost just a curiosity that this band is from Japan as they might as well have been German or Italian with a Japanese singer.

There are several great songs on the album and I think that the band is at its best when they let loose and drive up the tempo and the energy, mixing it with strong choruses and they have a winner and there are some of those on this album. Stand Alone is probably my favourite track with Raise the Sun that we can hear in both English and Japanese version as the runner up, I also think that Thousand Fields is worthy of an honourable mention. It is an entertaining album no doubt about that, but it just isn’t funny or ninja enough to deserve an unreserved thumbs up. Fans of power metal will almost certainly find this album great and I doubt that too many of you would be disappointed should you buy the album.

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