Triumph – Rock & Roll Machine

ARTIST: Triumph

TITLE:  Rock & Roll Machine

YEAR RELEASED: 1977

CHART ACTION: #182

SINGLES: Rocky Mountain Way

OTHER SONGS YOU MAY KNOW: Maybe Canadians know the title track

LINEUP: Rik Emmett, Gil Moore, Michael Levine

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT: Canadian power trio veers more to rock than progressive music, but still sounds generic and blah, despite their rockin’ intentions.

SOME WORDS, PHRASES AND CLAUSES ABOUT THIS RECORD: As hard as Triumph tried on their second album, by cutting down the progressive noodling and moving towards straight rock noodling, they still didn’t succeed. The rock is generic, and the lyrics are puerile for the most part, and when Moore sings, he strains more than sings.

The title track to this album seems to be an excuse for Emmett to have a long guitar solo that kind of sounds like Eddie Van Halen, except more polite and less virtuostic. Their cover of “Rocky Mountain Way” seems to exclude all of the good parts from the song. They do have a couple of multi-part songs, and they’re very much sub-Rush.

Not much passes muster, except “Bringing It On Home.” I’m keeping that one.

NOTES & MINUTIAE: This album, when released in the US and around the world, was actually a combo of their first two Canadian records. They had a second cover for the international market. Now, you stream their first two separately.

IS THERE A DELUXE VERSION: No

GRADE: C: One decent cut does not an album make.

 

Triumph – Triumph

ARTIST: Triumph
TITLE: Triumph (a/k/a In the Beginning)
YEAR RELEASED: 1976
CHART ACTION: No, not even in Canada
SINGLES: 24 Hours a Day, What’s Another Day of Rock N Roll.
OTHER SONGS YOU MAY KNOW: Not unless you had an 8-track of this while driving through Saskatchewan.
LINEUP: Gil Moore, Rik Emmett, Michael Levine.
WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT: Canadian power trio’s debut is rather forgettable and generic.

SOME WORDS, PHRASES AND CLAUSES ABOUT THIS RECORD: Triumph’s debut album (first only released in Canada) finds the trio all over the place stylistically. They don’t seem to know if they want to be proggy or hard-rockin’.

To compound the identity crisis, the collection of songs is just meh. There’s nothing here that hasn’t been done better, or done before, whether they’re aping Peter Frampton, or Grand Funk, or Budgie, or even their fellow countrymen, Rush. Only Don’t Take My Life made me raise my head up and go, hmmm. The rest is either just generic rockin’ or pretentious prog. Pass.

NOTES & MINUTIAE: When RCA started to release Triumph records internationally, four cuts from his album combined with four from their second to create one record.

IS THERE A DELUXE VERSION: No. Basically when everything was re-released on CD they un-combined the first two albums. Yay?

GRADE: C-: They would get better, or at least memorable.

EXILED