Tokyo Blade

Tokyo Blade, an outfit rooted in 1980s heavy metal, navigated repeated roster overhauls across their run, yet founding guitarist Andy Boulton stood out as the lone fixture who never left the fold. Initially billed as White Diamond, then Killer and Genghis Khan, the musicians finally locked in the Tokyo Blade name and stepped onto the scene in the early part of the decade. Their opening release surfaced in 1984, issued as a self-titled set inside the United Kingdom while carrying the title Midnight Rendezvous in other territories and spotlighting Alan Marsh on vocals, Andy Wrighton on bass, John Wiggins on guitar, Steve Pierce on drums, and Boulton. Later efforts arrived in quick succession, among them 1984’s Night of the Blade, 1985’s Warrior of the Rising Sun, and Blackhearts and Jaded Spades, while the band shared bills with such established metal acts as Metallica, Ozzy, Whitesnake, Mama’s Boys, Dio, and Slayer. By 1986 Alan Marsh, Andy Wrighton, and Steve Pierce had exited and briefly resurfaced in the short-lived Shogun, which delivered a self-titled album the same year. Tokyo Blade kept issuing records until the group folded by the close of the 1990s, although one last studio album uniting Boulton and Marsh reached completion without ever seeing release. Boulton surfaced again in 2001 through a personal site that hosted solo mp3s of his newest material.