09. Riot Fire Down Under 1981 (Elektra)
Heavy Metal
In the forest which way does the wind blow?
Overview
Riot were surely the most underrated metal band on the American scene at the time, as their debut album
Rock City (on my 1977 list at no.9) had been littered with all the qualities of what a great metal album should be all about
: a big sound, melodic flair, energetic overtones and a tight production, but its reward for all this had been a Japanese only release. But it was the old adage I guess of the late 1970s, where record labels especially American ones, really didn’t know how to promote their own heavy metal acts unless they had an obvious marketing angle like Van Halen did for example. Therefore Riot would be a band constantly plagued with record label insecurity especially in their early and pivotal days. Apart from the record label issue, the New Yorkers to a degree were also largely responsible for shooting themselves in the foot by constantly having an unstable line-up which didn’t help matters either. So by the time of their third album the
Fire Down Under, the band had already lost three of their five original members Lou.A.Kouvaris, Jimmy Iommi and Peter Bitelli who had all parted company and also their sophomore set
Narita didn’t quite reach the quality of their excellent debut album
Rock City either. Despite the band’s lack of marketing by their already various record labels, they had turned out to be a major live metal attraction especially in the UK and had successfully toured the UK with the likes of both Sammy Hagar and even more notably with NWOBHM giants Saxon in 1980. They were also one of the first bands to be on Donnington’s ‘Monsters of Rock’ bill and appeared on the
Monsters of Rock split album in 1980 as well. So the band certainly had the credentials as far as metal was concerned and in fact British metal fans went ape**** over Riot as a live act according to most accounts! So by the time of their 1981 release the
Fire Down Under, the band put out an album that was not only their best to date, but also an album that should’ve launched them into the big league, as yet again the album with Guy Speranza’s strong bell-like voice and all the previously mentioned metal qualities of the band were strongly present here as well. The album’s best known song would be “Swords and Tequilla” and the excellent single “Outlaw” but much like their previous two albums, the
Fire Down Under would be plagued by the dreadful albino type creature that was the mainstay of the band’s album covers and in the golden age of album cover marketing, their albino creature was hardly ‘Eddie the Head’. But the real Achilles heel of the band was surely their already aforementioned problems they had with their various record labels and this would reach a head with the release of the
Fire Down Under album, as I once read that the record label claimed that the album was just too loud to be issued (would love to quote this but I’ve no idea where I actually read it) which seems a crazy notion now to be aimed at a metal band, but then again back in the early pioneer days of the late-1960s Blue Cheer faced such absurd accusations as well.
Verdict
Upon hearing the
Fire Down Under album we have a recording that was surely an example of a band at their peak and I’ve even seen the band at this time as being described as the “American NWOBHM”. This of course doesn’t make much sense in a singular context, but on further analysis it does, as its contradiction in terms simply means taking the British metal model and reinterpretating it in an American fashion which the band most certainly did. The band had also completely adopted the twin-guitar attack of Tipton & Downing from Judas Priest to animate proceedings even further and the issued album stylistically despite its American arena/stadium rock intentions, probably sits somewhere between NWOBHM stalwarts such as Saxon and new speed metal merchants Raven in terms of both bite and attitude. The album opener “Swords and Tequila” is a blustery metal opener and with its revved-up Saxon type feel it’s one of the band’s best ever known tracks. The title track “Fire Down Under” is an even faster effort and evokes the speed metal of Raven here in perfect fashion and is highlighted by the speed playing of guitarists Mark Reale and Rick Ventura who don’t miss a note! When the band decide to slow things down, the heaviness as is often the case increases and Riot are no exception to that rule, but Riot as a band really had the ability to produce a certain amount of moodiness and haziness when this occurred and on the excellent “Feel the Same” the band kind of evoked that Led Zeppelinesque moodiness from the 1970’s and the song also predates the lumbering future sound of a band like Soundgarden. The track “The Altar of the King” cleverly transcends from being an acoustic Ritchie Blackmore Rainbow type track into a roaring Ritchie Blackmore Rainbow type effort. Then when the band try to meld the two speeds together to find that perfect middle ground, they come out with a commercial cracker like “Outlaw” along with the lesser but decent b-side opener “Don’t Hold Back”. The only real flaw of the album is that the band were also struggling for quality material at times and the filler that they have tends to mount up as is often the case towards the rear end of the album. These include some of their faster tracks “Don’t Bring Me Down” and “Run for Your Life” and then there is the more commercial Rick Ventura penned “No Lies” which lacks really where it matters for this type of song. The album closer “Flashbacks” with its guitar carnage in a concert setting is largely a bad choice to finish the album on, it would’ve worked on a live album but not on a studio one. Overall the
Fire Down Under is one of the more solid American metal albums of the early 1980s largely thanks to Guy Speranza on vocals his last for the band and the guitarist Mark Reale (both of whom sadly passed away in 2003 and 2012) The
Fire Down Under is from a time where American metal in its pre-glam and pre-thrash days, was always kind of seen as a wandering entity compared to its more focused British counterpart and always suffered for that exact reason. Finally if the album had ejected some of filler tracks it would’ve figured much higher on this year’s list due to the quality of the material that the band were capable of putting out.
Guy Speranza- Vocals
Mark Reale- Guitar
Rick Ventura- Guitar
Kip Leming- Bass
Sandy Slavin- Drums
Production- Steve Loeb