Triumph: Rock & Roll Machine (1977)

 Triumph’s second album, from 1977, finds the band taking baby steps forward, and a couple of giant leaps sideways. As with the first album, much of this is basic late ‘70s hard rock, but the songs show a lot of growth.  Such as the acoustic/electric dichotomy in “Bringing It On Home”, and the epic title track, replete with a Rik Emmett solo breakdown that owes more than just a simple nod to Jimmy Page. 

There is a fair bit of pretension on this album, such the multiple-movement song suites “The City” and “New York City Streets, both of which give the illusion that the band was far deeper than they were. However, those proggish leanings are curious and quite interesting (and they do pull it off even if they never quite see it through). 

The following year Triumph signed to RCA in the US and this album was reconfigured, with a new sleeve and a modified tracklist - the two aforementioned epics were given the boot, along with a pedestrian bar-band number called “Little Texas Shaker”, and they were replaced with the three best songs from the debut album - “24 Hours A Day”, “Street Fighter”, and “Blinding Light Show / Moonchild”. While this kind of bastardization I usually frown upon, it honestly makes for a better “debut” album. 

That having been said, I’m coming at this  having known the rest of this band’s catalog for more than 35 years but only now hearing this version of Rock & Roll Machine, and the songs they left behind, for the very first time. I really like those songs a lot but it’s totally understandable why they were left behind and I’m actually glad that it took until now to hear them because it’s kinda like a cool bonus. “The City”, in particular, is a monster.