Triumph is:
Rik Emmet-Guitar, Vocals
Gil Moore-Drums, Vocals
Mike Levine-Bass, Keyboards
Triumph is a rock band from Canada that started out as a Led Zeppelin cover band back in the mid 1970's. Although not too widely known, they hardly ever fail to write a good hard rock tune. Native to the city of Toronto, Triumph consists of the classically trained guitarist Rik Emmet (who also takes over the duty of lead vocals around half the time), drummer gil Moore (the other vocalist), and on bass guitar and keyboards, Mike Levine.
THE SONGS
Now the songs on this Classics collection have a very different sound than some of the other ones. Some are classic rock songs (ie.
Lay It On The Line, and
Rock And Roll Machine to name a few), and some with a few synthesizors (ie.
Tears In The Rain, and
Spellbound) but all of them are great songs in their own way. I personally thought that they were very comparable to Rush, but without the extreme amount of synthesizor use as they did. The heavier tracks such as
Follow Your Heart,
I Live For The Weekend and
Lay It On The Line are among my favourite tracks on here. But the slower, softer tracks such as
Hold On and much of
Magic Power were just as radio friendly as any songs on this compilation. My personal favourite song on here is either
Lay It On The Line or
Follow Your Heart but it was a tough decision because the whole album was spectacular. There is not one bad song on the compilation, but if would have to choose a least favourite song I would choose
Somebody's Out There.
THE GUITAR
Rik Emmett is a fantastic guitar player. He is classically trained and it is very hard to descibe the guitar tone on this album (due to this being a compilation and the guitar sound changing over the years), but the style stayed pretty much the same. Most of the guitar riffs on the hard rockers are power chord driven songs with fantastic vocals. The solos are not something to look past or ignore at all because they are some of the most soulful, melodic, and well written solos I have ever heard. The distortion isn't very high, but it is high enough to fool people into thinking that this band is heavy metal band. Just check out the solo in
Rock And Roll Machine, which is basically 2 minutes of just guitar (not even bass or drums) with those pick melting riffs that tend to be sloppy at times, but very melodic ad speedy. Rik only placed at #97 on the Top 100 Heavy Metal Guitrists list on Hit Parader magazine, but I think he deserved a way higher place.
THE VOCALS
Rik Emmett and Gil Moore share this duty, but I feel that Rik is a better vocalist than Gil. Why? Because Rik can hit higher notes for longer periods of time and the fact that is vocal range is far superior to Gil's. That doesn't neccesarily mean gil is bad, because he is very talented as well. Gil's voice is the lower pitched voice, but still sort of whiney, and Rik's voice is the very high, more beautiful sounding voice which is good for the softer songs.
Well there you are. If you like Rush, Van Halen, AC/DC, Aerosmith, and other classic rock bands I urge you to check out this band.
Recommended
I Live For The Weekend
Follow Your Heart
Lay It On The Line
Rock And Roll Machine
