Year Of Metal #045: Triumph - Allied Forces
Metal album covers are often amazing, ironically or otherwise, from the elegance of Deafheaven or splattered colour of Boris to the uber-extra works of Pantera or Maiden. When they’re bad, though, they can be quite outstandingly bad, and this is a bad album cover. Triumph’s 1981 LP is adorned with an extra pointy Flying V, the band’s name shooting off lightning bolts, all finished in super cool reflective chrome. Couple that with the fact this Canadian act seems to lean regularly into prog and power metal and alarm bells are ringing for me right away.
Allied Forces, while by no means a great listen, was therefore a pretty pleasant surprise. The worst thing you can really say about it is it’s a little bit limp at times. Vocalist Rik Emmett isn’t setting the world alight and leans too heavily on a Robert Plant impression, but the songs themselves are well crafted, detailed and sparkling (it’s a self production job per the credits, but the immensely prolific Bob Ludwig mastered it, which can’t hurt).
Lead single and minor hit “Magic Power” is blighted by a bugbear of mine: songs that are about how great music is (you don’t need to sell me on music as a concept, musicians), but it’s a pop-metal gem, even if it is pretty lame. If it can’t quite compete with the best work of Journey or Bon Jovi, it’s there or thereabouts, and the guitar solo, also torn through by Emmett, is a euphoric belter. I’d have liked to hear a lot more of it.
Talking of the New Jersey mega stars, they go even more Jovi on second single “Fight The Good Fight” (or more accurately, the other way around - they hit a close approximation of the “Blaze Of Glory” riff some nine years prior to Young Guns II). They’ve got the dramatic power ballad structure down pat here - the build’s perfect, the solo rips once again, and the post-instrumental climax is all passion and falsetto. It’s not hard to figure out why this band have done fairly well but have by no means cemented themselves in the hard rock/heavy metal canon. They make all the right moves, but that ineffable It Factor is missing. They also shoot themselves in the foot by saving the best bit of the song, a soaring, swooping riff, for the final twenty seconds, then immediately fading out.
They can go a little harder when they want to. The title track whacks everything up - it sounds as though the band are competing to be heard over one another, to surprisingly good effect. The diplomatic Emmett even allows himself a lengthier guitar solo, though it is a quantity over quality job - he struts his stuff technically speaking, but doesn’t hit the heights of some of his briefer efforts. It’s the definition of an album track, if we’re being honest, but I like it for the change of pace.
There’s a scrappiness to the album on the whole which endears Triumph to me quite a bit. They don’t convince as hard livin’ party dudes on the limp “Hot Time (In This City Tonight”, but their tributes to the soothing balm of music and their slightly Christian-sounding tracks give you a better idea of the real them. Some nice chaps from Canada who had enough to get by and be remembered by a select few, but not to immortalise themselves on rock radio forevermore. There’s a lot of charm to that.
