Meanest Reviewer

TRIUMPH — Thunder Seven

I was stuck at a stoplight today and had the car window down trying to enjoy a gorgeous afternoon. The guy in the car next to me also had his window down, and was lip-synching away to his CD player, out of which was blaring “Spellbound”. Took me back all the way to my college days when this album came out and I had to listen to several of these songs on the only half-decent radio station in our town at the time. I realized that I hadn’t played it in over twenty years, and considering the totally crappy day I had today and fighting the desire to throw myself in front of a train, I decided to throw on my very old copy of Thunder Seven instead. After that I find myself thinking that there are still a couple of trains that run yet tonight.

“Spellbound” always struck me as rock-in-a-can, even back in the 80s. Rik Emmett has by far the most annoying metal voice I’ve ever heard, and he seems to have no real ability to stay in tune for more than a couple of notes in a row. Also, I get the impression these guys are mouthing the timing of the tempo to each other in studio when they record, or at least that’s the way this plodding song sounds.

“Rock Out, Roll On” – well, ‘nuff said.

On “Follow Your Heart” Emmett's voice is actually sort of okay for the most part, probably because he shares the vocals with drummer Gil Moore who makes Emmett sound good. The sentiment of the lyrics is pretty typical Triumph stuff – chip on the shoulder, go kick ass in the world and don’t let 'the man' deny you your dreams. Yeah team – go, fight, win! The random high-hat cymbals just seem gratuitous, and the bass has no synchronization with the rest of the song at all.

I guess “Time Goes By” is supposed to be the sort-of ballad, with strangled-cat harmonized vocals and occasional mellow passages, but the overall theme seems to be ‘I’m getting old and I need a chick’ or something to that effect. Nice little guitar solo in the middle though – props to Emmett for that.

“Midsummer’s Daydream” is a brief respite from the onslaught, where Emmett treats us to a short acoustic instrumental that I felt like copying a dozen times or so and using to overwrite the rest of the cassette. “Time Canon” is some sort of barbershop quartet lame knockoff of Spock’s Beard’s “June” I guess, but it’s so out of place and abrupt it actually creeped me out the first couple times I heard it.

“Stranger in a Strange Land” starts off as a pretty decent blues rocker, but for some inexplicable reason someone turns on Emmett’s mike and it pretty much goes downhill from there. There’s a part in the middle of this where he tries to hold a sustained screech of a vocal and my cats actually drag themselves off the floor and leave the room. Both of them!

“Little Boy Blues” is a pretty decent soft bluesy instrumental to close the album. Like “Midsummer’s Daydream”, if the boys would have just extended this to the length of the whole album then the thing would have been a much better offering, perhaps even listenable.

As it is, I know that many fans of this band believe this to be their best studio work. I agree. One star.