Heavy Metal Army

Japanese hard rock/heavy metal project established by 70's rockers. Their music is a mix of early heavy metal sound and 70's hard rock. Powerful riffs, melodies and... lots of keys/organs, it sounds little like "Judas Priest meets Deep Purple". HMA released (in 1981) only one album (called simply Heavy Metal Army" or "1"), later vocalist Hiroto Arasaki (known also as John Joseph Patterson), keyboardist/vocalist Yuki Nakajima and drummer Eiichii "Chibi" Miyanaga (Murasaki) established Eastern Orbit, which is treated as Heavy Metal Army continuation. Notes: - Among several other Japanese metal bands that followed, members of Heavy Metal Army sometimes wore Nazi-swastika armbands and such. They used the imaginary for shock value. - Kyoji Yamamoto from Ｂｏｗ Ｗｏｗ played guitar on the album, but he was listed as secret Mr. X, because of label problems. - Yuki Nakajima (keyboard) also had a solo project and released the vinyl LP The Prophecies in 1982 on the Trio label. It's an instrumental album, featuring Kyoji Yamamoto on guitar, Munetaka Higuchi on drums and Masahide Sakuma (of Plastics fame) on bass. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.