The dollar Triumph discs had been languishing in the to-be-written-about pile, so a while ago I thought it was finally time to get them all covered in a (then) relatively short post. But then I kept finding another Triumph CD in the bins just as I was ready to publish it, causing me to postpone the post a few times.
Previously I had never bothered to explore Triumph's music that much. I thought "Rock & Roll Machine" (the song) was very cool, and some of the assorted Allied Forces era tracks I've heard were pleasant to listen to, but not necessarily something I'd search out...
I'm covering these in alphabetical order, but this is actually the last CD I found out of all of these. This was the band's most commercially successful album by far, and I remember being vaguely familiar with the guitar and thunderbolt logo from the cover long before I heard any actual Triumph music. Sadly, this would be the last time they incorporate anything that can be truly called metallic in their music. The somewhat Rush sounding singles "Magic Power" and "Fight the Good Fight" got a lot of attention, but I find "Ordinary Man" to be a lot better. Still, I like everything here to some degree, aside from maybe the opening and closing tracks. I just don't find them terribly interesting. The speedy and quite heavy title track is a very worthy successor to "Rock 'N' Roll Machine" although doesn't quite surpass it.
Triumph - Edge of Excess - $2.00
The final Triumph studio album from 1992, sans Rik Emmett. At this point, even had he still been in the band, I doubt anything they released would have been of much interest to me. It is harder-edged and much less AOR-oriented than Surveillance, but still comes across as generic late '80s hard rock.
Triumph - Never Surrender - $2.00
As of writing this, I haven't heard Thunder Seven, but I suspect this is the last Triumph album to have anything even vaguely heavy on it. I was quite amused because I heard a lot of Dio (specifically in the cadence of the vocals) in opener "Too Much Thinking," so I looked online to see if anyone else thought so, and a lot of folks consider it to be inspired by/a ripoff of "Neon Knights" (I do hear the basic similarity they're talking about). It's weaker than the Sabbath song but still pretty good. The other standout for me was "All the Way." Title track is a letdown because it sounds like it should be a powerful song, but turns out to be quite mellow aside from the solo section. "Writing on the Wall" is another one of those Triumph songs that sounds vaugely Rush-like due to Rik Emmett's vocals.
Triumph - Rock 'N' Roll Machine - $1.00
Not the Rock & Roll Machine album proper, but the "international" version with 4 tracks each from the band's first 2 albums. I was expecting the title track to be the only thing to really resonate with me here, but "Street Fighter" has quite a mean, speedy main riff--it's a shame they don't really sustain the heaviness throughout the entire song. The real surprise for me was "Blinding Light Show/Moonchild," as it's a great proggy song with bursts of NWOBHM heaviness. The rest of the tracks are more like typical '70s rock songs and didn't impress me very much.
Triumph - Surveillance - $1.00 (This CD is available for trade)
Had never heard any of the later era Triumph stuff before. Some of the songs have more of a hard rock edge than I would have thought, but the rest is AOR--"Let the Light (Shine on Me)" is especially very Journey-esque--which is what I was expecting. Since I bought this as a tradable and wasn't expecting it to be a keeper, no big deal.
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