King's Evil

I'm going to make a sweeping generalisation here about Japanese metal, but it appears that many bands seem to mimic the popular styles from other scenes around the world without doing a lot to forward the genre, except by adding heaps of excellent guitar soloing. You think I'm crazy? Think Loudness. They produced some slightly warmer than tepid stabs at hair metal, got lucky with "Crazy Nights" and had Akira Takasaki as their selling point. United were an okay thrash band with guitar work that rivalled, and often surpassed, that of their Bay Area influences. And that band Shadow, who released an album on Century Media last year, are a passable stab at the NWOSDM, with far superior soloing than anything In Flames or Dark Tranquillity have been able to lay down. You get my point, and to add to that list comes King's Evil, a ferocious old school thrash collective drawing influence from Teutonic titans like Kreator and Destruction, and that's all you really need to know. That and that the Yamada brothers not only know how to burn their fingers up and down a fret board as quickly as possible, but have a good ear for phrasing and simply rule when it comes to placing solos and knowing what to do and when. That's all.