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Having spent a good amount of my heavy metal formative years listening to bands like Loudness, Earthshaker, and Bow Wow, I have a soft spot for Japanese-sung lyrics. It's an instantly identifiable language in the framework of metal, so when Earthlings, the debut album from Coven Japan, showed up, I was all in. This band has some of the '80s DNA from their predecessors with a bit of US metal songwriting from the early '80s, emphasizing guitar, bass, and drums, heavy, direct riffing, and catchy choruses, but the sound is better. Earthlings opens with some ass kickers in "Land of the Rising Sun" and "What Goes Around Comes Around" that pound out of the speakers rolling over all in their path. The album continues in this vein for a while before trending a little less heavy toward the end. "Night Flyer" has a definite Earthshaker vibe, very accessible with a hard rock sensibility, but still a solid track. With a female lead vocalist, Coven Japan reminds me a lot of a Japanese version of Crystal Viper with, of course, the other bands I mentioned in the mix. If you like this kind of no frills, thundering metal, grab yourself a copy of Earthlings and break out the air guitar.