The Benja-man Is Verbose

I was aware coming in that Riot were literally a different band before Thundersteel , with only one member in common with the act that bore that name prior to going on a five-year hiatus.  Actually hearing it play out is still something, though.  By stream numbers and sales, their most successful record seems to have been their 1981 release, the embarassingly titled Fire Down Under .  I dabbled with that one as much as I could stomach, and went back and forth on whether it should be considered metal at all.  I don't necessarily object to lumping it in with metal, but the overall sound is way more reminiscent of the rock of the '70s to me: pulsating guitar riffs, warm production filling all channels with the same note, and the very simple choruses.  The stuff that was still part of the Riot's sound come  Thundersteel that I compared to Thin Lizzy in the last post?  Definitely a major emphasis in the early stuff.  A slower blues-based number li...

1986 is the "year" in question; all of their output on that label, such as it was, was from 1986.  By the time I got to listening to the Trees' first couple of releases, I'd recalibrated my expectations from viewing them as key steps in the evolution of Mr. M. Lanegan's songwriting to knowing that by his report, he had no creative hand in them beyond being the guy who sings.  It was still interesting to first listen to Other Worlds and realize that, at least at his point in their life, Screaming Trees are not about the vocal performance.  Like, at all.  Anyone could be the singer on a song like "Like I Said," and it really wouldn't matter very much.   At this point Lee presumably didn't know the kind of tool he had in his singer when he put these tracks together.  Honestly, even after he figured it out, knowing that the guy in question was constantly threatening to quit, it still might have still made sense to keep his songs from getting too voc...