Gotta go fast
It's oddly difficult to be a Lovebites fan when you're approaching them from the perspective of a lifelong metalhead. A shocking amount of their fans I've come across throughout my expeditions into The Internet have next to zero interest in metal as a style or culture at all. A sizable contingent of their fans seem to be primarily anime fans who apparently latched onto them because they're five pretty women that write music that sounds like the opening theme to the most batshit battle anime of the decade. That's not a judgment, by the way! That particular flavor of fan can give me secondhand embarrassment from time to time since they occasionally treat the band like an idol group and carry themselves with (in)approprate fervor (Did you know that Haruna is nicknamed the "Pocket Nuke" because she's under five feet tall but is one of the hardest hitting drummers in the scene? Or that Asami was originally an RnB singer whose biggest influence is Alicia Keys? If not then congratulations on never reading a Youtube comment in your life because you'll see the same factoids spit out with identical wording by dozens of people on every single fucking video they feature in) but honestly I'm happy to share space with these fans because the more people that listen to killer music, the better. The point is that they're tough to talk about because a plurality of their fans don't seem to have heard a Gamma Ray song in their lives but are just so stoked that KOS-MOS* is real that they helped catapult them to that level anyway.So as a hygiene-averse hesher who's here for the riffs, they're equally difficult to talk about because they're simultaneously the best currently active power metal band and the most frustrating songwriters on the planet. The band's fourth full length, Judgment Day is actually my favorite LP of theirs, but it's plagued by all of the same problems they've always had and seem to have zero interest in ameliorating. The specific angle that Lovebites takes with their music is one of self-indulgent maximalism. I fuckin' love this kind of ludicrous bombast and am incredibly glad that Lovebites exists, but it's been said that your greatest weakness is your greatest strength taken too far, and boy howdy does that describe this band. Their Achilles Heel has always been and continues to be their inability to do anything but shred their hearts out at seven million BPM for an hour straight. I continue to believe that they'd be best served by just releasing one or two EPs per year because jesus shit every single one of their non-EP releases is completely fucking exhausting to finish and Judgment Day is no exception. They finally wizened up and limited this one to fiftyish minutes but we used to at least get a piano ballad or catchy arena-friendly trad metal song every now and again. This is just Dragonforce-joins-Helloween from minute one to minute done and it's overwhelming in a bad way. "Victim of Time" would be the most insanely shredtastic barnburner on 90% of all power metal albums released in the last decade but here's it's just the sixth insane shredtastic barnburner in a row and you've got four more to prepare for. Boxers get breaks in between rounds dammit why can't listeners?
But with that said, this is still their crowning achievement up to this point. Judgment Day tore my face clean off in spite of these issues in a way that only their EPs had previously done. Absolutely nobody channels early Sonata Arctica's ear for hooks performed with such blurring speed as well as Lovebites does, and tracks like "The Spirit Lives On", "Soldier Stands Solitarily", and the title track expertly showcase an undeniable mastery of what makes power metal so magical at its best. This only dropped last week and I'm already certain that "Soldier Stands Solitarily" is going to be one of my favorite songs of the year. I actually worry that I'm underselling how gonzo this is despite namedropping Dragonforce, because damn near every single second contains either a screaming guitar solo, wild drum fill, glass-shattering wail, or lead melody so quick and demanding that even Buckethead would give a silent nod of acknowledgment. If anything sets this apart from the rest of their discography it's how much more focused it is. One of their oft-mentioned secret weapons is the occasional circle-pit worthy thrash riff that they pull out of their collective asses before clobbering everybody around them, and "Dissonance" is the only track that really flirts with that kind of Megadeth flavored unhinged violence this time around. On one hand that's a bummer, I love those moments, but on the other hand it means their music has become even more cohesive and all the stronger as a result. The hooks are stronger, the drumming is more impressive, the solos are more awe-inspiring, everything feels more "whole" than they've ever managed before and I suspect it's largely because they laser focused so hard on all of their best elements (in addition to simply getting better with time like most writers/musicians do). This is unfortunate imagery but they've always felt like they had a sort of "glass ceiling" above them where it felt like all of their potential was smooshed up against plexiglass, and apparently fourth time is the charm because they fucking shattered that glass and used it to cut the throats of all doubters. This is musically more or less what they've always done (a bit narrower in scope but not enough to be surprising) but just... I dunno man better than before.
Even with that effusive praise, I am still ultimately of two minds on Judgment Day. It's just as dense and overwhelming as its predecessors but manages to be the best possible version of itself. It's their shortest album yet but still feels like four tracks should've been cut and released as an EP instead. "Judgment Day" is an incredible song and one of the highlights of the album but honestly feels like "Shadowmaker: The Sequel". "Soldier Stands Solitarily" is the best song they ever wrote but it shares space with "My Orion" which is one of their worst (and the only song that's truly just annoying and kinda sucky instead of a victim of "too much"). I truly do adore Lovebites and Judgment Day is truly great, but I fear that there's a second pane of glass they need to break through next because no matter how enjoyable most of this album is, it's still held back by the same problems they've been struggling with since their inception and pattern recognition tells me that I'm just screaming at the ocean about it at this point. If their previous work didn't impress you, this won't change your mind, but if you're on the right wavelength it'll absolutely rock your world.
RATING: 80%
*- I asked some friends for suggestions for an anime character that rides the same line between demure femininity and raw earthfucking power as how the members present themselves and used KOS-MOS as the closest thing I could think of on my own. One guy laughed at me and said I was showing my age by referencing Xenosaga, which ironically made me decide to just use her as the comparison anyway because what would a BH review be without a reference to a late-golden age JRPG anyway?
