Imari Tones – Coming Back Alive

Imari Tones
Coming Back Alive
Kitchen Knife Records (release date: February 7, 2025)

By Robert M. Marovich

Taking their inspiration from the heavy metal / hair bands of the 1980s, Imari Tones is one of today’s hardest rocking Christian bands. That they hail from Japan, where less than one percent of the population identifies as Christian, makes their ascendance more impressive. Their mix of Christian imagery with Japanese history and culture makes them distinctive.

I’d go one step further and suggest they are closer to a Christian punk band. From their no-holds-barred vocals (now in English), outbursts of vigorous evangelical preaching, snarling guitar, scattershot melodies, and Shinryu’s anarchic drumming, Imari Tones have more in common with the Sex Pistols than Van Halen. Plus, evangelizing for a religion that 99% of the citizens of their home country don’t espouse makes their message counter-cultural.

Coming Back Alive, the title of the group’s nineteenth full-length album, is not metaphorical. In June 2023, a raging fire engulfed the building where two of the power trio—Tone and Marie—were living. They were the last to evacuate, literally running through flames to escape with their lives. Although they survived, their beloved cat didn’t make it (it’s the same cat we hear on the album track, “The Cat Says Hallelujah”). Thankfully, Tone and Marie found refuge at Asao Christ Church in Kawasaki, Japan, and subsequently recorded this album there.

“Small Flame” and “Co-In” contain the most compelling melodies on an album that supplants conventional melody for earsplitting blasts of sound. “This Cat Says Hallelujah” – about the late cat who abandoned the flat of an angry owner to live with the two band members – is an allegorical statement that God loves everyone, “even blesses the little one like her.” May kitty be blessed in her journey over the Rainbow Bridge.

“Rock in Heaven,” a song that espouses God as love and also includes some humorous side bits between band members, is the most shredding and thrashing of the dozen cuts on the album.

Imari Tones pound hard from A to zed on Coming Back Alive, as they do on all their releases. But make no mistake—their sonic outburst does not come from a place of nihilism but from full-spirited Christian belief. The only thing I would have done was add a silhouette of a cat to the front cover drawing of the trio and a cross standing strong despite a background of flames. Maybe with wings.

Four of Five Stars

Picks: “Small Flame,” “Love Wars”