PROGRESSIONS OF POWER

After the very straightforward and generic 1979 album Just A Game - that I consider the band's weakest ever achievement - Triumph could hardly sink any lower. With Progressions Of Power the band plays it rather safe and overall they do not evolve or push many musical boundaries. 'Progressions Of Power' is thus an extremely misleading title as the band hardly progressed at all from their last album. Generic party hard rockers like I Live For The Weekend, I Can Survive and Tear The Roof Off follows the pattern of the awful American Girls from the last album.

However, there are some signs of what was to come on some later, more musically successful, albums. The Bluesy (semi-)ballad In The Night features a strong vocal performance and some tasteful acoustic guitar licks, but it is certainly not progressive in any reasonable understanding of that term. Nature's Child has a somewhat heavier sound than we are used to from Triumph and features a slightly Black Sabbath-like riff (however, Black Sabbath never made anything as trite as this not even on Technical Ecstacy or Never Say Die). The best song of this album is clearly the Spanish flavoured Fingertalkin'/Hard Road which reminds slightly of the excellent Flamenco inspired band Carmen, particularly their third album (which is the least good of Carmen's three albums).

My version of this album has a different running order compared to what is listed here, but it has the same songs. The production is not quite as it should be and the sound is slightly muddy compared to both earlier and later albums. This fact leaves me no other alternative than to give this the same rating as Just A Game even though this album is a slight improvement in musical terms. Despite one good number (Fingertalkin'/Hard Road) and a couple of decent ones, this is not really recommended unless you are a Triumph fan. Triumph never made a great album, but they sure made better albums than this!

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