During the late ’70s and into the ’80s, few bands were pilloried by music critics quite like Triumph. “Faceless” and “corporate rock” were two of the tags regularly assigned to the Canadian power trio composed of guitarist-singer Rik Emmett, bassist Mike Levine and drummer-singer Gil Moore, and those were some of the kinder descriptors lobbed at the band.
Admittedly, Triumph never professed to be anything more than a sleek, well-oiled, turbo-charged outfit that blitzed its audience with smoke bombs, lasers and flame throwers while dishing out headbanging, fist-in-the-air AOR anthems like Lay It on the Line, Magic Power and Fight the Good Fight. Hell, they even called one of their albums Rock & Roll Machine, just in case their subtlety went over anybody’s heads, and to celebrate their razzle-dazzle stage act, they titled a song Blinding Light Show.
