A Nippon-Metal album that stands out for many reasons. Most of all because of the really cool, occult artwork, and secondly because of the music, which is heavier and more straight forward than most other releases from this country and time period. After reading about it and later seeing the cover on the net, I searched desperately for it for months and eventually found a copy for trade. A bunch of Swedish crust punk 7”s shorter and one devilish-looking Metal LP richer, I impaled it on my turntable to enjoy ...and failed rather miserably I’m afraid. CROWLEY really doesn’t keep their promises. With so much studded leather, pentagrams and inverted crosses you have a right to expect more than middle-of-the-road US metal somewhat in the vein of LÄÄZ ROCKIT or ARMOURED SAINT, i.e. boring and not very catchy. It’s not the kind of album I like slagging off, but CROWLEY are, in one word, Forgettable. I’ve listen to the album more times than it deserves, and I still cannot find one song that sticks in your head. The production is flawless, the packageing is of typical Japanese 1st class, with a beautiful fold-out insert with lyrix, band pic and more neat artwork and they are all really competent musicians, Takashi doing the kind of high and very well performed vocals you’ll find on 99% of all Japanese 80’s releases. It’s just the actual songwriting that is a bore. On the closing track “Floating Man” they speed up a bit from their generic, mid-paced sound, but it’s still not the Power Metal-solar-plexus-punch it could be. They released an 8" EP (!) called “The Scream of Death” one year earlier on the same label, which took me quite a while to get hold of. It’s even more rare than this seldom offered LP, but musically it totally thrashes "Whisper..." and is one of the best Power Metal releases I've heard from Japan. Another typical case of a band who made a killer debut EP and then ran out of good ideas on their full-lenght effort. Even if it doesn’t suck totally, this album is far from essential, unless you collect “satanic” looking LPs. Note that lyrically they aren’t half as Black Metal as let’s say WITCHFYNDE or DEMON. I suggest you get another copy of “Shout at the Devil” instead.

Listen to this record here. (provided by the Vibrations Of Doom webzine)