Triumph
Classics (MCA 42283)

Oh, the folly of my youth. When almost any progressive rock seemed interesting, when fancy time-changes and technical chops could a good song make. Days when I listened to Rush, early Genesis, and Yes around the clock, and when I'd give bands like Styx, Kansas, and Saga a chance because, well, I felt I was somehow supposed to.

Those days are, for the most part, gone, though I can still dust off Signals or Genesis Live and get something out of 'em. With that in mind, I decided to pull Triumph Classics out of my sell-back box and dust it off for one more try.

It wasn't pleasurable. There are a couple good tracks; "Hold On" is basically a good Styx song, and "Fight the Good Fight" beats down its horrible lyrics with a propulsive yet supple rhythm section and a glorious coda. And "Spellbound" is marginally okay if I'm in the mood.

The rest is crap. No, I never need to hear "Magic Power" or "Lay it on the Line" again, and I never liked them in the first place, anyway. "Tears in the Rain," "Live for the Weekend," "Follow Your Heart," "A World of Fantasy" … these songs are more clichéd than their titles, and twenty times as pretentious.

Most horrid, though, is the album closer, "Rock 'n' Roll Machine." It's almost laughably awful, except for the piercing headache and muscle twitching it induces. In seven excruciating minutes it encompasses basically everything ever done in rock that is wrongheaded, overblown, and worthlessly silly.

If this were buried as the last song, just to represent the band's early years, I might excuse it. But I know how prog-metal works – the last song is really the centerpiece, the big epic "climax." Yuck. One more reason this album of "classics" sucks.

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Review by HIP