siLLy puPPy
VICIOUS RUMORS is one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s longest lived classic heavy metal / US power metal bands having formed as far back as 1979 in the North Bay city of Santa Rosa. This band has been the baby of guitarist / vocalist Geoff Thorpe for its multi-decade existence and as one could expect has gone through various lineup changes and stylistic shifts as time goes on. While many of the Bay Area metal bands of the era gravitated towards the up and coming thrash metal scene, VICIOUS RUMORS was more interested in the anthemic metal of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and even KISS as a point of inspiration.
SOLDIERS OF THE NIGHT is the debut album that was released in 1985 and is the only album to feature both vocalist Gary St Pierre and guitarist Vinnie Moore. Moore would depart the band soon after this debut’s release and enjoy a fruitful solo career as one of the 80s most accomplished neoclassical shredders. Although his guitar talents are displayed on this debut they are a bit tamped down in comparison to Moore’s solo works such as “Mind’s Eye” which emerged the following year. St Pierre would hang around until 1987 before being replaced by Carl Albert who would join the band during their peak “classic” era which includes the three album run from “Digital Dictator” to “Welcome To The Ball.”
The band was quite active from 1981-85 on radio shows and playing live gigs locally with some of the early thrash bands like Death Angel, Exodus and Possessed. All of this exposure landed them on the Shrapnel Records label which was famous for signing guitar shredders who released solo material but also equally infamous for its dreadful production quality therefore SOLDIERS OF THE NIGHT suffers from a dismal production and mixing job with a weak almost monotonic overall effect. Fortunately the music is engaging enough to not diminish the overall effect but a modern remastering job is very much in need if even possible at this point in the game.
Very much in the style of the era, VICIOUS RUMORS was very much a typical sounding band of the day with galloping guitar riffs, bantering bass and drumming prowess with operatic vocals that narrated classic epic metal themes of going to battle and kicking ass. Vinnie Moore delivers some outstanding soloing however it is obvious that his talents were tamped down on SOLDIERS OF THE NIGHT. I can’t say St Pierre’s vocals are quite up to the task either as he had a goofy yelp turned into operatic screams. Not bad most of the time but sometimes he doesn’t quite hit the notes properly and after all this early era of metal was still about melody and harmony as dissonance and atonality were far from the norm at the time.
VICIOUS RUMORS delivered a fairly typical speed metal / early US power metal album with SOLDIERS OF THE NIGHT having been similar to bands like Metal Church, Liege Lord, Jag Panzer, Helstar and Armored Saint. Musically the eleven tracks are excellent with the instrumental guitar solo “Invader” showcasing Moore’s virtuoso guitar techniques. This album may not have been the band’s peak of creativity but certainly opened the doors for them to have a successful decade that found them enjoy a bit of success starting with the following “Digital Dictator.” Really the only thing not to like on this one is the crappy production. True the band’s sound was a bit generic in many ways but competent enough to thoroughly enjoy if you love the 1980s heavy metal style of playing. On the lower side of excellent but a solid debut.