Papy Jeff Metal's Favorite of the Day: Toranaga

Toranaga’s Back, Baby! Shoguns Strike After 36 Bloody Years!

Blimey! 36 years? Feels like yesterday Toranaga came roaring outta the UK underground with Bastard Ballads! These Yorkshire thrashers: Andy Burton (bass), Steve Todd (drums), Andy Mitchell (guitar), and Mark Duffy (vocals) weren’t just a flash in the pan. They were the real deal: raw, fierce, and proudly unpolished. Think NWOBHM meets Overkill, with Maiden riffs and a splash of Sabbath doom. Pure metal carnage.

Back in the day, they slayed a BBC Rock Show session with Tommy Vance and opened for freakin’ Manowar. Then boom! Chrysalis Records signs them within 24 hours of a Manchester gig. That second album, God’s Gift (1990), was brutal. Tours with Venom, Saxon, Annihilator followed. Then… disaster. EMI buyout, EP shelved, Motorhead tour gone. Just like that, vanished into the smoke.

Mitchell left for Oz in ’06, but the others regrouped as The Bastard Son of Toranaga (still cracks me up). Righteous Retribution dropped in 2013—heavier than a sack of anvils. But silence followed... until now.

And now? Toranaga 2024 is a juggernaut: Duffy’s snarl is back, joined by Toby Wallace (drums), Liam Mulpetre and Josh Goldie (guitars), and Mike Todd on bass. They’re already tearing up stages with Onslaught and Acid Reign, and they’ll crush Poland’s Helicon Fest in 2025. Their new EP A New Order lands May 2025, then it’s off to Germany’s Headbangers Open Air!

Toranaga never died, they just reloaded. That “Desecration” lyric vid is a war cry for old-school thrashers and new blood alike. The crown’s back where it belongs. Long live the Shoguns!