Midnight Rendezvous

Tokyo Blade began on a really high note; the type of note King Diamond can reach after suffering a twisted testicle. Their self-titled debut was a piquant cocktail of sleazy barnstorming and sagely epics, like if Angel Witch wrote Wheels of Steel fan-fiction. Sadly, it was trammeled by a few throw-away filler songs, and more importantly, an astoundingly bad production. This left the album looking pretty anemic when it really shouldn't have, so Midnight Rendezvous was made to ensure their debut album had a six-pack and a granite chin by the time it left British shorelines.

Sporting a streamlined, hard-hitting tracklist and a less-horrific production, Midnight Rendezvous is Tokyo Blade's flagship - the definitive experience, and for my money, one of the most "complete" NWOBHM albums ever released. An effective coalition between catchy hair metal and crazed speed metal, 'Highway Passion' and 'Killer City' are two tracks with a bloodlust tempered by accessible, sapid riffing; it's precisely the type of angsty melodies and fiery solos that would move the pens of countless US and Teutonic thrashers raised on a diet of hot-blooded NWOBHM.

'If Heaven Is Hell' is a towering goliath of unrelenting guitar harmonies, punctuated by an unforgettable acoustic bridge that follows pentatonic scales for that trademark Asiatic spice. Meanwhile, 'Meanstreak' is a whole other beast, screaming into battle with scalpel-sharp rock 'n' roll riffs and dazzling solos. No pretense, no affectedness, just British speed metal pluck at its finest; in many ways similar to the bloodthirsty cuts from Killers like 'Purgatory' and 'Twilight Zone'.

The production still isn't fantastic, but bass sounds markedly crisper and there's a little less treble bias this time. That is to say, it doesn't sound like an angle grinder sawing through sheets of tinfoil. This makes their commercial-focused title track sound pretty passable in the grand scheme of things, and considerably more self-assured and composed than most tracks from, say, Saxon's Power and the Glory. But as you no doubt know, more of Tokyo Blade's time and money will be spent on production and hand sanitizer after touching Def Leppard's coattails, allowing songwriting complexity to fall behind more and more as the decades wore on.

“…smell of death and danger keeps you driving on…”

Without purposely cheapening whatever review I could write for this, I think it’ll just be easier to cut to the chase and offer up that the main difference between this version and the original self-titled debut of ‘83 is a few songs, namely the ousting of the admittedly cool “Liar”, manageable “On Through the Night”, and bum cover “Tonight” from the original tracklist and replacing them with the more contrived, yet fairly lively “Midnight Rendezvous” and the hard-charging pair of “Mean Streak” (now two words) and “Highway Passion”.

The words “Midnight Rendezvous” would be major players in the band’s not-so-well-known album cover/name/song nest of confusion that I never wanted to get lost in, but as merely a title track, it’s more musically thoughtful, commercially insightful, and more ‘82 than the others; three uncommon Tokyo Blade personalities that live mainly in its melodic chorus, but is still likely more appealing than “On Through the Night”, yet unfortunately doesn’t convincingly justify its presence over enthusiastic “Liar”. “Mean Streak”, after an uncharacteristic and ineffectual melancholy keyboard intro, becomes one of the lp’s sootiest grunts that was already predicted by its namesake, meanwhile faltering only slightly behind in straight cannonball approach is “Highway Passion”, but to its credit consumed a diet more laden with supra-contagious twisted iron bars and bent-to-hell steel girders during its impressionable adolescent days for more intrinsically adventurous swerving and weaving.

While guitarist Ray Dismore appeared only in “If Heaven is Hell” on the debut, because of all the song shuffling he locates more time in the ‘ol spotlight, adding the new triangle of tunes to his album credit list.

Obviously and despite the loss of “Liar”, this is the more satisfying version. With these game-changing additions, not only are we in the presence of a stronger, more-bang-for-yer-buck release overall, but are more or less treated to the Genghis Khan Double Dealin’ ep from ‘83 in its entirety, and the renditions aren’t really that dissimilar for all you pains in the asses out there like me.

To cover the smaller and decidedly unimportant differences; cosmetically, except for the Combat release having the title in the upper right hand corner, the front covers are exactly the same, meanwhile the back cover has this color x-ray thing going on where the blacks on the debut are now red, the reds are now black, the white boxes containing the track listing and credits are now red and are lightly edited as is, naturally, the song list and the label info, and some fonts are different. The disk labels here are Combat dark green as opposed to the debut’s Powerstation light green. No insert that I’m aware of.

If you’re looking for a more fleshed out draft of the rest of the album, it’d be easier to check out my review of the debut which is only a click away:
http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/Tokyo_Blade/Tokyo_Blade/4167/Gutterscream