ARYON — Rebels of the Night (review)

Album · 1983 · Heavy Metal

1.5/5 · 2019-04-24
siLLy puPPy

The Bay Area has produced some top notch bands over the decades with some like Metallica, Santana, Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead becoming some of the biggest names in all of music history but so too have there been plenty of duds to pockmark the record stores and have been relished to the footnote status of in depth historical searches into the nooks and crannies of the past. One such band that was a mere blip on the map was the Newark based ARYON whose five members Bruce Sedlacek (bass), Rob "Buzz" Reid (drums), Russel Vazquez (guitars), Doug Irvin (vocals) and Jeff Warda (vocals, guitar) convened for a brief moment in time, released one album and then disappeared as quickly as they manifested.

While there were plenty of bands that never became household names that were outstanding examples of how the universe isn’t fair as they had as much talent or even exceeded the creativity of the superstars but never got a fair shake in the dirty world of business, some bands such as ARYON are more obvious as to why their plane crashed before it ever set flight and all it takes is one look at the album cover of the band’s sole album REBELS OF THE NIGHT which came out in the year 1983 when bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and a whole barrage of NWOHM bands were already dominating the musical landscape, to understand why.

Adorned with one of the stupidest album covers in metal history with the band peeking in a bedroom window of a little girl and a collection of 1950s toys, it’s obvious that these guys were fairly clueless about the emerging metal aesthetics that should have included some fantastical dragon, terminator styled robot, an army of skeletons or something really cool but instead insinuate some sort of infatuation with the world of pedophilia which in today’s modern world makes me cringe. Likewise the musical performances don’t get much better. ARYON were the typical amateurish heavy metal band of the early 80s with the classic sound that included the expected guitar riffs that extend into soloing antics and a fairly standard bass and drum rhythm section. While Doug Irvin attempts to belt out the operatic vocal style of say…. Bruce Dickinson, his voice falls flat and makes this album true horrible listening experience.

REBELS OF THE NIGHT is actually quite a silly album and sort of predated the shallowness and feel good sing about nothing lyrics that would peak in the latter half of the 80s with glam metal. The melodies are rather ordinary and ARYON didn’t bring anything original to the table whatsoever. This album is really just an amateurish attempt to copy the scene of the day and fails in pretty much every way. While there are a few tracks that don’t suck such as the closer “In These Days,” all the other failures of the album conspire to make this one of the most head scratching releases of the entire 80s metal scene. The album cover is hideous and the music is at best mediocre and add the substandard vocals of Doug Irvin, i think that this very well could be the worst album i’ve heard of 80s metal so far.

While it’s true that many bands’ first attempts don’t exactly create the next major masterpiece in their given genre, at least the kernels of potential are present but in the case of ARYON it seems that they couldn’t even nail down the basics and the result is one of the greatest train wrecks of the era. A vocalist who can’t carry a tune and hit the high notes, a songwriting team that can’t write one memorable hook and absolutely nothing new under the NWOBHM sun that comes to the table, ARYON rightfully deserve to be demoted to the bottom dregs of heavy metal history. This is unbelievably bad and deserves a listen just to put it into perspective just exactly how good other bands that you though sucked really were!