Shoot like lightning

The last post seems to have generated some interest on the internets, so while I have your attention, let me drop some knowledge on ya heads. A few months ago I mentioned INH and Team-e's retro game music collections. They've been successful enough apparently to expand the product line somewhat. It doesn't hurt that the latest release is a collection focused around personal favorite, Seibu Kaihasu/MOSS's Raiden series. The four disc set, '雷電 The Lightning Strikes Back,' brings together the previously released sound tracks for Raiden 1 & 2 (discs included with 'The Aces High' DVD set), Raiden III ('The Flash Desire' DVD set), and 'Ultimate Of Raiden' (bonus included with Raiden IV's first print run on the Xbox 360), along with the original and New Release versions of the Raiden DX score, which has not received a soundtrack of it's own to my knowledge to date. Until they make a Raiden V, this is your (almost*) definitive source for Raiden music, composed by series maestro, Go Sato, and remixed by industry heavyweights. The disc set has been out since September 28th, and I'm rather annoyed that I have not heard of it until now.

That, however is not even the real news here. In celebration of the album's release, and of the Raiden series (and Sato's contribution) as a whole, a concert will be held in Tokyo's Club Goodman, appropriately found in a basement of Akihabara, on November 23rd. The headlining act will be Heavy Metal Raiden, made up of Go Sato himself on bass, Success Corp's WASi303 on guitar, and some dude called Ikedaminorock of 2nd guitar (with a hardcore drum machine accompanying the live players no doubt see below). Check out the PV for a taste of what Raiden metal sounds like. I need to be in Tokyo in 30 days.

*Go Sato was not responsible for the iconic original Raiden 1 score, and the remixed tracks found on the FM Towns version of Raiden Trad seem to be missing.

11-11-11: The drummer for the Heavy Metal Raiden show will apparently be some bloke called Ritz Kawase (川瀬リツ), and the keyboardist will be TaRAKO. You can check out the band/show site here. According to that site, some of those dudes were responsible for the music found in Triangle Service games, Milestone's "games," and the Muchi Muchi Pork/Pink Sweets collection. That's kind of underwhelming(?) ...

Update 2nd: The main keyboardist for Heavy Metal Raiden is apparently now some dude called Kazushi Tsurukubo. He's got an entry at VGMDB, but the games he's worked on don't ring any bells.