魔女伝説〜MESSIAH’S BLESSING

by 本城未沙子

To put it bluntly, this is a thoroughly mediocre heavy metal album. Messiah's Blessing is the debut album by Honjoh Misako, featuring members of Loudness. Given the reputation of her and the Loudness members, one could say they’ve managed to produce a somewhat listenable album, but that’s about as far as its merits go. There are a few moments where some striking riffs emerge, but they are fleeting and fail to elevate the overall composition of the songs. The larger structures of the tracks are not even worth discussing. Moreover, the album’s cover tracks—which make up 60% of the total content (though whether we can truly call them "covers" when they’re essentially Loudness songs, minus the vocals, is debatable)—add little of value, with one notable exception that I’ll address later. If anything, they detract from the album’s overall quality.

The highlight of the album is the Introduction. It’s epic, melodic, and far too short. Once past this brief moment of brilliance, we’re greeted by the title track, "Messiah's Blessing", an ordinary but decent heavy metal song. The next track, "Climax", is even more run-of-the-mill, though still listenable. However, from the hard rock piece "Stoned the Night" onward, the album fails to leave any lasting impression on the listener. While it doesn’t quite descend into the territory of albums that are outright painful to listen to, it also doesn’t offer any compelling reason to seek it out.

The exception hinted above is the cover of Cream’s "White Room", which appears as track 6. This is by far the most interesting and enjoyable track on the album. Unlike the utterly uninspired covers found in tracks 5, 7, and 8—or even the somewhat grating covers of Riot(track 3) and Slade(track 9)—this rendition of "White Room" fully embraces the essence of what a "cover" should be. It transforms a '60s hard rock classic into a vibrant '80s heavy metal experience, delivering both surprise and delight. However, even this track doesn’t quite overcome the inherent limitation of merely altering the texture of the original. Nonetheless, if you had to pick one track to listen to from this album, this cover would undoubtedly be the one to choose.