Victory

In the annals of 80s heavy metal and particularly its more rocking and decadent cousin glam in the middle of the decade, Germany seemed hellbent on one-upping the L.A. sleaze scene when not pioneering more extreme versions of speeding and thrashing. Though Accept and Scorpions had all but cornered the market on the most outlandish extremes of blues and sexual innuendo based goodness, a 70s rock turned 80s excess machine in Victory (former known as Fargo and tracing their roots back to 1973) was looking to offer up some formidable competition. Decked out with all of the obligatory tricks of the trade inherited from the likes of Van Halen, AC/DC and a few if the lighter players of the NWOBHM, not to mention a suggestive album cover to rival Virgin Killer, all of the right elements were in place for this Hannover-based quintet to break into the American and European album charts. All of this naturally came to pass, but the remaining question surrounding this band's eponymous debut of 80s cliche is, does it still hold up more than 30 years later?

The answer is partially yes, as in contrast to a number of extremely cringe-inducing offerings to come out of the latter days of the glam craze (this would be a couple years later when Poison and Cinderella really broke out), there is a somewhat metallic crunch to be found in their band's sound. Naturally all of the goofy, hedonistic analogies to bumping uglies is oozing out of every syllable that Charlie Huhn utters at the mic in his best Brian Johnson meets Joe Elliott imitation, and the underlying songwriting structure has more of a mainline hard rocking character to it that channels Back In Black a bit more than it does Screaming For Vengeance, but the dueling guitar assault of hard rocker John Lockton and his more showy counterpart Tommy Newton (best known for his engineering and production work with Halloween and throngs of power and progressive metal acts in the 90s and 2000s) definitely gets the job done and then some. Likewise, although often exaggerated to the point of near ridiculousness, Huhn's gravely shrieks and growls are competently done and leave little mystery as to why he was recruited for Axel Rudi Pell's first solo outing a few years later.

Amid the tightrope between cock-rocking corniness and musical integrity that this album walks, the results are a bit inconsistent when breaking things down song for song. Things start on an overall positive note with "The Hunter", which functions as a sort of go-between for the partying shuffle of a number of classic Kiss songs and the more harder-edged jazziness of Iron Maiden's "Running Free", with the guitar assault definitely breaking more towards the latter. Similarly riff oriented and reasonably heavy numbers such as slow creeping "On The Run" and the more up tempo "Don't Count On Me" also make a decent racket in a Ratt meets Def Leppard fashion. On the other hand, cliche blues-rocked based anthems like "I'm Down" and "Wreck Man" lay on the retro-70s sound a little thick and come off more like a strip club romp a la Great White. Not helping matters much is that even when things have a heavier instrumental assault like "Chicks On Display", the lyrical content tends to undercut the chops of the instrumentalists. That being said, this band proves to have a solid command of the power ballad approach and comes out with two winners in "Red Alert" and "Can't Stop Missing You" that both channel W.A.S.P.'s "Sleeping In The Fire" and predicts the same approach that would work for Leatherwolf a few years later.

For all of the strengths and weaknesses that this album possesses, Victory is totally a product of its time, and will likely only appeal to the most avid of retro hard rock meets metal enthusiasts who can't stop rocking their copies of Love At First Sting and Metal Heart and don't mind a band that dwells on their libidos 90% of the time. From a purely technical standpoint, this album is a cut above a lot of the material that was dominating the rock charts at the time, and it definitely deserved the degree of success that it enjoyed, but even among traditional heavy metal fans, this isn't in the same league as the early outings of Twisted Sister or W.A.S.P., and if anything, trails a bit closer to the somewhat lackluster character of the former's final go at a studio recording in the late 80s Love Is For Suckers. Things would definitely pick up for this band in the coming years in both the instrumental department and from a standpoint of lyrical credibility, so apart from the rabid completists out there who fell in love with one of this band's latter day outings or those who can't get enough of the 80s party scene, this is like the SRB rocket that would launch this outfit into stardom, obsolete yet not without a sense of nostalgic charm for those whom seek it.

I wonder why this album, or even most of this band's discography, has pretty much no reviews written for it. Is it because this band isn't good? Maybe. Although just basing on looking at the album cover and song titles, this looks like a typical glam album. And when I think glam I think Motley Crue, and that's not real metal, that's sleazy hard rock. Now before we even get to the music, a part of how good a band is definitely based on their lyrics. This is where Victory fail's miserably. I think one of the worst examples of this is for the track Chicks on Display (think Motley Crue's Girls, Girls, Girls...total steal). If it's not directly about girls it's something with sexual innuendo. Or sex directly. And every single song on this album has these same type of lyrical ideas. So not only do the lyrical themes on this album become tiresome and cliched, and overused, but also, their totally, stereotypically, glam. Victory might as well have been one of those hundreds of 80s glam bands in southern California during the 80s, because they would fit right in.

The next failure with this band is that Charlie Huhn sounds like a bad mix between Brian Johnson and Richard Black (AC/DC and Shark Island respectively). His voice doesn't have enough power to be Brian Johnson, nor the range or roughness of Richard Black. So hes stuck somewhere in the middle, so his vocals end up going nowhere. As if this weren't bad enough, there is often those outrageously annoying (unless done right) layered vocals that often appear in choruses, one of the worst examples being the cheese covered I'm Down. Or the weird vocal part at the very end of Red Alert. However, this is a hair band so there is a lot of catchy sing along choruses such as on The Hunter or Wreck Man. Some of these sing along choruses are fun to sing along to but then when you listen to what your singing you stop because of the stupidity of the lyrics (I wanna be a wreck man wreck man cause it feels so goooood). More cheese.

Next up would be the guitars. Tommy Newton and John Lockton. Although they do an alright job, they definitely aren't Jay Jay French and Eddie Ojeda (Twisted Sister). The riffs on here tend to follow similar chord progressions. Just moving up and down a few power chords. So if you've heard one song on here, I can safely say you've heard all of them. Predictably the solos aren't exactly real hot either. They seem sort of minimalist to me. Sort of like they're just playing a few notes so a solo can be there. So certainly nothing flashy or head turning, however I guess since the songs aren't that good anyway, it doesn't really matter. Now I would talk about the bass, but like the rest of the band, there's nothing really special about it.

The drumming is the highlight of the album. And that's saying a lot. Whereas everything else isn't very good, the drumming is actually alright. Nothing real spectacular but at least it doesn't stand out badly like everything else. Just like the guitar solos, the drumming here is pretty minimalist, and in the production mix it's not real high in the mix. So considering the drumming isn't anything that good and it's still good in comparison to the rest of the album should tell you something.

Overall this is a pretty generic glam album that should be avoided unless your extremely bored. And even then you could probably find something else that's better.