LOUDNESS has changed singers, lost its drummer, and broken up its original lineup and put it back together. One member has been there for every day of it.
Suzy
Akira Takasaki was born in Osaka on 22 February 1961. In 1973 he and some classmates, among them the singer Hironobu Kageyama, started a band called LAZY. It made its debut in 1977, marketed as an idol rock group, and its members went by nicknames. Takasaki’s was Suzy.
He was not happy with the direction. When LAZY ended in 1981, he and the drummer Munetaka Higuchi started the band they had wanted all along.
America
LOUDNESS released its first album in November 1981. In 1985 it signed with Atco Records, becoming the first Japanese metal band on a major label in the United States. Thunder in the East reached number 74 on the Billboard 200. Lightning Strikes, a year later, reached number 64.
Takasaki’s playing was a large part of why. His use of tapping was noticed by guitarists abroad, and Paul Gilbert is among those who have been named as influenced by him. That makes a neat line through this site: Gilbert later became the mentor of Li-sa-X.
For how that American campaign compares with BABYMETAL’s a generation later, read our piece on the two roads to the stadium.
The One Who Stayed
Singer Minoru Niihara was out of the band from 1988 to 2000. Other vocalists and other bassists came and went, including Naoto Shibata of ANTHEM. The original four reunited in 2000. Higuchi died on 30 November 2008, and Masayuki Suzuki has been the drummer since 2009.
Through all of it, Takasaki is the only original member who never left. He also found time for solo records, starting with ジャガーの牙 in 1982.
Forty-Five Years
The band marked its forty-fifth anniversary with a tour across 2025 and 2026, with a closing date set for 25 November 2026 in Tokyo, the anniversary of the debut. LOUDNESS has also said it plans to record a follow-up to 2021’s Sunburst.
Start with Thunder in the East, then Sunburst.
