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SNIPER
Open The Attack

Electric Ladyland (1984)
Rating: 9/10

A live album this, which is pretty hard to believe as apart from maybe the last track on each side there’s little if any detection that the Japanese outfit are actually performing in front of an audience. Still, what this album lacks in atmosphere it sure makes up for in the sheer power and energy of the music.

Having gained the services “for one night only” of Marino’s ace guitarist Raven Ohtani, Sniper have produced one hell of a debut album.

It’s heads down from the word go as the title track comes blasting out of the speakers in almost power metal fashion. A superb opener this, matched only by the frenzied ‘Never Change’ and the final cut ‘Fire’. The lead guitar soloing is breathtaking throughout, highlighted on ‘Dedicate’ and ‘Black Rain’.

The remaining tracks, ‘Over The Sky’, ‘Hard Time’ and ‘Nemurenu Yoru’, may lack the classic potential delivered by the aforementioned numbers, but it doesn’t take away the excellence of this album.

At present, Sniper are no more than a club band back home in Japan, but if the band can cut it on a studio album as well as they can live, then it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see them leapfrogging over fellow countrymen Loudness, Bow Wow and Earthshaker in the Japanese metal popularity stakes.

Bernard Doe

Review taken from Metal Forces, Issue 4 (1984)

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