Through the Storm

You know that dreaded sound effect in the original Mike Tyson's Punchout? The bwe-bwe-biOooOoo! noise, after your hubris sends your dwarven avatar hurtling to the mat by an 8-bit Bob Sapp? In my head, that noise rings out whenever a heavy metal band gets too confident. When a reformed Tokyo Blade combined glam and grunge in Burning Down Paradise, or when Saxon was yawning out glam ballads when metal was conquering the world. Now, Through the Storm isn't that bad, but by Riot's own established metric? Let's put it this way. If you hear reference to something as unnatural and eldritch as a "bad Riot album", they're probably talking about Restless Breed, or this dreary bag of fertilizer right here.

...And none of the 90's albums, funnily enough. Mark Reale and his newly formed band had fared inordinately well through this tye-dye gauntlet, enjoying moderate success and releasing a whole bounty of engrossing new material. Sure, Mike DiMeo's gruff croons made most songs sound suspiciously similar, but Through the Storm will have you appreciating their uniformity, if nothing else. For lack of a better word, this album sounds so 2002-y. Reale's long-established knack for astoundingly creative earworm riffs wasn't exactly overt in Sons of Society, but throughout the overly protracted Through the Storm, they're nanoscopic. A modernistic, sterile, and commercially relevant approach to songwriting is the elephant in this particular room.

And by commercially relevant, I of course mean risk-averse, mid-tempo chugfests like 'To My Head', the title track, and the worst offender of all, 'Essential Enemies', which is not only the worst song on this CD, but quite possibly the worst song Riot's ever written. Most notable are Mike DiMeo's vocals, locked in the thrall of a ghastly distortion effect scavenged from Papa Roach's trash can. Add to that the loutish radio rock tempo, directionless riffs, and silly orchestral obbligato, and you've got a rocker as inviting as a punji stick trap. It's the type of composition I'd expect to hear in the soundtrack of a PS2 streetracing game, surrounded by Underoath and Kasabian.

Even when this album gets moving, you can tell it isn't exactly revving its nuts off. One of the more hot-blooded tracks is 'Turn the Tables', which resembles synthetic, kid-friendly punk rock much moreso than the raw, unfiltered metal stylings we've grown accustomed to. One thing that remains familiar, however, are Mark Reale's incredible solos. They remain as potent as ever, trapezing alongside Mike Flyntz's harmonizing handiwork to create a typhoon of illuminating setpieces, most notably in the Vinnie Moore-esque instrumental 'Isle of Shadows'. Though it's worth noting these high-flying solos don't exactly gel with the aforementioned stiff and unnatural rock foundations they're glued to.

And so another unsightly door-ding is added to the erotic 60's convertible that is Riot's career. Despite being more willing to recommend Through the Storm over Restless Breed - and the bulk of Born in America for that matter - I'm not entirely sure who I'd be recommending all this inflexible and awkward hard rock to. Hardcore Riot fans would undoubtedly be disappointed at just how unRioty everything is; likewise those who have ignored Riot would have their foolish prejudices completely justified by this wooden mulch. So... I recommend this to people who really like PS2 racing game soundtracks, I guess.

After taking on vocalist Mike DiMeo the sound of Riot became pretty stylized. You could venture to say that from 1994 to 1999 they recorded the same album 4 times and simply changed the lyrics around and you wouldn’t be too far off. While some may have seen this as a negative since the 80s power/traditional metal format had long outlived its glory days, I always thoroughly enjoyed the music they put out, despite the slow and nearly non-existent evolution of their sound. On “Through the Storm” they seem to have mellowed out a bit, especially when compared to “Inishmore” which had a high concentration of speed tracks.

We do get some solid fast songs like the previous albums in “Burn the Sun” and “Turn the Tables”, the former of which sounds incredibly similar to the embellished live version of “Warrior” they touted on the “Shine On” live album. Otherwise this album is haunted by a seemingly endless stream of mid-tempo songs, and although many of them feature some decent riffs and flashy solos ala Mark Reale, ultimately take a back seat to anything that was put out before this during the DiMeo era of the band. The title track is a good example of a highlight song that could have been a lot better if the metronome was kicked up ten or twenty clicks. It has a really enticing choral intro with DiMeo doing some great lead vocal fill-ins, but ultimately the song never hits a point of climax.

The instrumental track “Isle of Shadows” sounds more like a rock ballad than a metal song. It has some nice lead guitar work, but doesn’t cook the way you’d hope it would. Likewise, the two cover songs found on here are scarcely all that different from the original versions; minus that “Here Comes the Sun” is now an instrumental. “Only you can rock me” does rock out a bit, but not all that much more than the original UFO version did. I can’t really see much point in doing this song if it isn’t going to sound any different from the original, particularly if your Riot and you don’t have to go through the drudgery that cover bands do when they try to imitate other artists,

In short, this is the weakest album I’ve heard out of the band thus far, even weaker than the Rhett Forester stuff, which at least had some energy to it. If you are looking for a solid example of how great this band sounded with Mike DiMeo, either pick up a copy of “Brethren of the Long House” or “Inishmore”. If you are a rabid Riot completist like me there are a few good songs to be heard on here, but I didn’t become a Riot fan simply to get a couple of solid tracks, I did so because I could listen to either all or most of the album and not get bored like I did here. If “Army of One” sounds the same as this album did, I think I may have found the reason why Mike DiMeo left this outfit to join Masterplan.