RIOT - Thundersteel (1988), upon further review

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 like "Outlaw" seems tailor-made for the sort of rock radio stations that are comfortable playing a band like Van Halen, who're more overtly metal than anything on Fire.  Now, for me, something like "Swords & Tequila" is clearly C-tier, at best, amongst music of that type, but my point is that it seems that that's where in the music scene Riot used to live.  A hard rock band like many others.  (Also, "Fire Down Under?"  Really?  C'mon...)  

I feel like I've seen "Warrior" from their debut, Rock City, listed as an example of proto-PM.  I'm not really hearing that.  A little more melodic, but both it and the title track from that record are both aiming at being sword-swinging anthems that're clearly cut from the same cloth as later stuff.  Eventually, though, by the time of 1983's Born In America, Riot had adopted a reverb-filled testosterone-coded '80s sound and recruited a more overtly "metal" leaning frontman, and a higher proportion of the songs from that release are on the metal-ish side.  Now one could maybe make a case for, say, "Wings Of Fire" as a full-on PM song, whilst other tracks are still totally in the same vein as their previous material.  Based on my surface-level dive, I kinda feel like the trajectory of their first five records is pretty much exactly what one would expect from a late-'70s/early-'80s act that went from having songs with "rock" in their title to having songs with "heavy metal" in their title.

After the earlier version of Riot effectively broke up, metal continued to evolve.  New iterations emerged, including one particular style of metal that was more grandiose and, shall we say, powerful, with regard to telling epic stories.  And sometimes with a sense of humor too, like with that one band who have a much heavier and more pointed (lyrically) song called "Warrior" but whose flawed-but-really-interesting first EP (and whose live gigs) opens with that "Silver Shamrock" thing from Halloween 3.  At least to my particular taste, besides the fact that I like power metal, I feel almost like PM eliminated the need for bands like early Riot.  This is normally a very silly way to frame something.  Normally newer music doesn't "replace" older music just because it amplifies certain elements at the expense of others.  It's not like I can't enjoy the occasional straight-ahead '80s metal anthem; remember that I got a real kick out of my sampling of a few Thor songs because, well, they do that thing really well.  "Thunder On The Tundra" will not cease to rock no matter how hard other songs written since then rock.  But I go back and forth about whether I can imagine ever wanting to spend time with musically inert songs that think they're soaring like "You Burn In Me" or "Running From The Law" in a world in which something like Grave Digger's Witch Hunter exists,* making early Riot sound so tame by comparison.  I can at least appreciate that the Riot songs do have a clear groove, what with their clear ties to the stuff that we ended up calling "classic rock."  They've got that going for them.  Still, though... I'd really rather be listening to Helloween.  Even (or occasionally especially) the Kai-fronted early stuff.

That long preamble finally brings us around again to Thundersteel.  Johnny's Mark's back, bitches!  This record is what happens when a band thoroughly versed in the old styles totally embraces the power metal aesthetic and runs with it.**  I mentioned the synthesis of rock/metal from across the '80s with the remnants of the '70s in the last post, but that's why I went through the little attempt at a career overview.  Riot sound like they're heavily enmeshed with the early metal scene of the turn of the preceding decade because they lived it - that's where they actually come from.  Thus, they start armed with the classic rocker's instinct for how to write an anthem.  Something about pairing that with the hallmarks of power metal, like the relentless machine-gun drumming and what sounds like a dual-guitar attack despite only having one credited guitarist (I honestly can't tell if it's multi-tracking or if it's Mark and Don collaborating perfectly) clicks in a way that their early work doesn't for me.  Power metal looks great on Riot.

As a rock band that tries for anthems, ye gods, do they ever know how to write the last chord of a verse in a way that's pleasing to the ear.  I already mentioned how much "Flight Of The Warrior" should make anyone want to ride downhill at high speed swinging a heavy weapon, so let's single out a late-grower that I didn't like much at first, "On Wings Of Eagles."  Each pre-chorus gives us a staccato into a big downbeat, prepping for the resolution into a fuller version of the original chord, prepping for the singer and band to climb a few steps into the dominant key for a big catchy chorus.  Or look at the burly riff that hits at just the right time to make the chorus of "Fight Or Fall" a rallying call.  These are some tight songs.  Rock musicians world over wish they could bottle up this stuff.  The musical details are right all around.  

One could think of Thundersteel as the apex of a particular type of power metal, kind of an American analogue to Death Or Glory as the end point of the '80s.  Granted, I think it's a pretty limited form of power metal, with the annoyingly screechy guitars in the same few galloping cadences, the limited range of types of melody lines that Tony can sing well, and lyrics running the gamut from songs about how "I" am an unstoppable warrior to songs about how "you" are an unstoppable warrior to songs about how "he" is an unstoppable warrior.***  That's why I personally probably won't put the record in my personal heavy rotation.  But let's be clear: Thundersteel rocks.  The record is one logical evolution of the first wave of power metal, delivered with panache.

I've heard Thundersteel described as the USPM record that today's fans of Helloween-derived EUPM can still adore.  I'm not totally sure if I can articulate why quite yet, but I'm guessing it's because EUPM also ended up arriving at a mix of arena-rock and speed metal, even if it was through a different route with different proportions.  One comparison would be to HammerFall; I didn't come up with it, but it makes sense to me.  Now, besides the fact that HammerFall suck and I hate them,**** there are also few differences between Riot and the trad-metal influenced power metal of the late '90s.  That's derived from the fact that the later bands didn't originally come from one substyle and incorporate others later; rather, they were equally interested in proto-PM, first-wave (US)PM, and second-wave German and Swedish PM, and just freely incorporated them all together with modern performance and production style.  It still makes sense that there's a lot of overlap between fans of the various ways of getting to this approximate point. 

Favorite track:  "Flight Of The Warrior"

Runner up:  "Thundersteel"

Least favorite track:  "Run For Your Life"

Rating:  4/5

Coming up:  A deep dive into Helloween's Keeper Of The Seven Keys, Part II, if and when I can ever get around to it!

*If this sentence reads like someone who has very little familiarity with early PM felt obligated, before advancing his thesis, to at least listen to one randomly selected popular German record from that era that's not Helloween or Running Wild, well, there's a reason for that...

**And yeah, the complete lineup change I'm sure plays a part.  Many probably will point to new bassist and Thundersteel co-songwriter Don Van Stavern's history as a member of Slayer, But Not That Slayer, A Totally Different Thrash Band From California With The Same Name.  I can't say that I did much more than listen to a few [SA] Slayer songs in the background while prepping to write this, but my lukewarm take is that they're very squarely on the thrash side of the developing thrash-power axis.  So that's probably not the main source of the PM influence on Thundersteel.

***Okay, okay, give or take the occasional bit of shallow musings on aging ("Bloodstreets") or human excess ("Sign Of The Crimson Storm").

****For anyone new here, this is a writer's conceit wherein I unexpectedly drop a ridiculously dramatic statement for comedic effect.  I don't actually hate HammerFall, I just don't especially care for what I've heard.  By the time I was done force-feeding myself Glory To The Brave for the blog last year, I was so incredibly ready to never listen to those songs again.