Lovebites – Clockwork Immortality


With a name inspired by – no, not the Def Leppard power ballad or the hickey Accept were screaming for – Halestorm’s ‘Love Bites (So Do I)’ is the all-female Japanese Metal band Lovebites. If you like your Metal relentless, big, bombastic and with one foot in the eighties then you have come to the right place, Clockwork Immortality (JPU Records) is their second album in their short three-year life and it is not for the timid.

Pounding drums, frenetic guitars, hooks galore, huge choruses and enough cheese to put you in a coma is the order of the day. ‘Addicted’ screeches off the line at a breakneck speed, with this Dragonforce esque ferocity, remarkably, sustained throughout. ‘Rising’ is of a similar ilk and amongst the records best, with its Judas Priest like hooks wrapped around layers of Power Metal bombast. Not far behind this is ‘Empty Daydream’, an upbeat and bouncy number with a riff that echoes Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’.

Plaudits must go to Haruna whose lively, virtuosic drumming is the driving force behind many of the songs – whether it be the pleasingly direct Thrash Metal of ‘M.D.O’ or the relentless double bass drums and guitar histrionics of ‘Pledge of the Savior’. Over 50 minutes of fast, furious and not to mention melodramatic Metal – whilst undoubtedly good – becomes overbearing and leaves the album feeling rather top heavy. All this builds to a ridiculous crescendo in ‘Epilogue’, a power ballad of epic proportions that is so overcooked it makes Guns n’ Roses’ ‘November Rain’ sound subtle. How can it not with an opening gambit like this; “If you have never cried, your eyes can’t be so beautiful”.

Not for the serious or faint of heart, Clockwork Immortality is a full-on blast of fast, frenetic and over the top Power Metal.

7 / 10

THOMAS THROWER