Album Passion by Earthshaker Review
By releasing their fourth full album in barely three years' time, Japanese metal band Earthshaker proved to be a very prolific bunch - but then it's easy to be prolific when every album sounds identical to the last. Although, to be fair, 1985's Passion did break some new ground for the group, only that "ground" was unfortunately littered with disposable hair metal tendencies, reflecting the rising success of L.A.'s hair spray set around this time. Opener "Come On", for instance, lowered the guitar factor on the Richter scale from heavy metal to hard rock, while employing a glam girl chorus, and ensuing numbers like "The Night We Had", "Whiskey and Woman", and the revealingly named "Heavy Dance" were more fit for dancing than head-banging. Cherry-top that with a song hilariously titled "Sweet Hard On", and wrap it all in artwork depicting what looks to be the Blob swallowing a '60s Mustang, and equal doses of hysteria and confusion probably sealed the band's doomed commercial fate outside their homeland. Surely it was no coincidence that England's inspirational Music for Nations label (also responsible for bringing those first Metallica and Anthrax albums to Europeans) chose to pass on Passion when they'd eagerly licensed all of Earthshaker's previous albums. As it were, Passion inaugurated the next phase of the group's career as an almost exclusively domestic quantity, popular only in Japan.Review by allmusic.com
