The 1981 Listening Post - Bow Wow - Hard Dog

 Reviewed by Rod Brogan

Released: August 21 1981 Bow Wow Hard Dog Genre: Hard Rock Rating: 3 out of 5 Highlights: Gonna Be Alright Big Shot "I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more treble on the vocals," said apparently every hard rock producer of the late 70s/early 80s. Hard Dog (apparently a reference to their album cover mascot, but still, what the hell is a hard dog?!) is Motley Crue's Too Fast For Love if it were good. You can't always understand the verses, with the reverb making a muddle out of the words, but the solid melodies still come through. This album is a return to form, as it were, for a group that was originally put together in mid-70s Japan as a manufactured boy band, then decided to rock out for three albums so as not to neglect the guitar skills of it's six string dynamic duo Kyoji Yamamoto and Mitsuhiro Saito, but then for some reason opted to be a pop act for three subsequent albums anyway. Yamamoto and Saito traded off on lead vocal duties throughout the years, with Yamamoto serving as the front man here, and his raspy rock voice gives the songs an appropriate hard partying character. Although the mix hasn't aged well (the drums sound like they are recorded on one overhead mic, and I couldn't even hear a bass line for the first few songs), this is still a really solid hard rock album, with some traces of the then-current New Wave of British Heavy Metal, especially in self-serious epic wannabe track The Breakdown of Earth. But when Bow Wow lighten up, they're terrific, as on Big Shot, with it's almost Beach Boys-esque vocal harmonies on the catchy chorus. The guitar work is the real reason to revisit this album. Yamamoto and Saito could really play. Long after the thin production and the typically adolescent lyrics fade, it's the guitars that shine through. No Randy Rhoades classical arpeggios, just tasty Ace Frehley style rock licks and solos like on Judas (In Blue). Indeed, Bow Wow opened for Kiss twice in the 70s, and obviously were taking notes. The next year, 1982, Bow Wow released two albums, and the second of them, Warning From Stardust, was ranked Number 23 on Rolling Stone Japan's 2007 list of the "100 Greatest Japanese Rock Albums of All Time." Every hard dog has it's day.