Hard, Heavy and a Classic 1979
Triumph Just a Game 1979 (Attic)
Hard Rock
Out there cutting some slack from Rush.
Triumph were one of the biggest bands to come out of Canada and had their commercial heyday as a band between the period of the late 1970s and the mid 1980s. They were a power trio that played a forceful blend of commercialized hard rock, that also appealed strongly to an AOR audience, and as the name Triumph suggests they still appealed to a harder rocking audience as well. Just two years earlier they had released their average debut the eponymous
Triumph and then improved their songwriting for their sophomore set
Rock & Roll Machine, before finally firing on all cyclinders for their third album
Just a Game.
Just a Game was also the album that broke the band not only to an international audience, but also broke the similiarity chain that they had to their more famous Canadian rock peers Rush. Like any potentially strong band, the band’s two frontmen Rik Emmett and Gil Moore were constantly at loggerheads with each other throughout the band’s career and this tension often drove them to try and outdo each other songwise on the band’s albums and most Triumph fans usually had a preference for either frontman. Guitarist/vocalist Rik Emmett wasn’t exactly a world away from Geddy Lee vocal wise and tended to focus on the more interesting compostions with an eye on commercialism, while drummer/vocalist Gil Moore concentrated on the more clichéd rocking tunes. Third member bassist Mike Levine was the in-house producer for the band and designed the album cover for
Just a Game. The huge commercial aspect of the band can be noted from the word go on the album opener the Styx inspired “Movin On” the first of the Gil Moore compositions, but from then on his selections are hit and miss, as the pick of the tracks on the album come from Rik Emmett and these are tracks like s “Lay it on the Line” the title track “Just a Game” and “Hold On”.
Just a Game is a great commercially friendly hard rock album that will also appeal to fans of potent AOR as well and it was the album started the chain of great Triumph albums from this period.
Rik Emmett-Guitar/Vocals
Gil Moore- Drums/Vocals
Mike Levine- Bass
Production- Mike Levine