Anthem

Japanese metal band Anthem had an album with Graham Bonnet singing and his is credited as a band member on a number of sites:
[www.bnrmetal.com] http://www.bnrmetal.com/groups/antm.htm
[www.allmusic.com] http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:ve8ibkh96akc~T1
(although allmusic says they "were joined by...")

However on Bonnet's own site he lists the Anthem release as:
"HEAVY METAL ANTHEM" (2000) / ANTHEM featuring GRAHAM BONNET
and I interpret "featuring" as meaning a guest appearance.

Also in an interview with Bonnet he, in no uncertain terms, explains his outside role with the recording of the album:
[www.kaos2000.net] http://www.kaos2000.net/interviews/grahambonnet2003
"I got a call from JVC in Japan and they said that these guys in Anthem wanted to meet up with me to see if I would be interested in doing a remake of an album that they did before but obviously this time it wouldn't be sung in Japanese. What I got was basically a demo with these other guys singing but all in Japanese and we had to translate it into English. It didn't work very well and it was hard to do to be honest with you. All of the syllables didn't fit in certain bars of the music so we had to kind of edit it a lot and cut it down so that it would fit the music. They came over here, two of the guys, and they sat here for a couple of days and went through a couple of things and then went back to Tokyo. I recorded all of the vocals here and it was another one of those things, like Karaoke vocals. But it ended up turning out pretty well and we did three gigs in Japan which were very fruitful, I must say. I was surprised. I said, "Naw, they are not going to go for this." But it was good, we got good crowds."

In my view this shows that he came in as a guest vocalist for the album ("karaoke vocals") and despite playing a few shows with the band in Japan this does not qualify him as a band member.


Kevin