Moving to MCA for album #7, Triumph teamed up with legendary producer Eddie Kramer to come up with one of the most 1984ish hard rock albums ever. There is a quasi-concept going on, based on the concept of time, but that only really exists within a cluster of songs toward the middle of the album.
Thunder Seven was my first experience with Triumph, purchased out of curiosity from a cutout bin at Camelot with I was 14 years old, and so I always hold this one dear. Fortunately it really is one of their best, so not a bad one to start on.
Gil Moore leaves behind the politics on the last album and instead offers up two of his best songs ever - “Spellbound” and “Follow Your Heart” (which opens and closes side one, respectively) and he contributes to the “time” theme with side two’s “Killing Time”, which he sings as a duet with with Rik Emmett.
Speaking of whom, Rik continues his streak of killer contributions with the Zeppified Def Lep vibe of “Rock Out, Roll On” to the explosive “Time Goes By”, the poetic “Stranger In A Strange Land”, and the balls-out Zeppelin groove of “Cool Down” (featuring a killer dobro break) Rik also gets in his solo guitar track here and this one - “Midsummer’s Daydream” - is by far his best.
This would be the last album that Triumph would make without the use of co-writers and outside songwriters and, in that regard, they really went out with a bang.
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