Register Forgot login?

© 2002-2024
Encyclopaedia Metallum

Privacy Policy

Viva > Dealers of the Night > 1982, 12" vinyl, Brain Records > Reviews
Viva - Dealers of the Night

Another Restless and Wild? Unfortunately not. - 54%

Nightlock, April 29th, 2008

An odd band here, somewhere in between the realms of AOR and hard rock/traditional metal. With none other than Michael and Rudolf Schenker’s (Of UFO and Scorpions fame) sister Barbara Schenker on keys. Strangely also… the keys are the best thing to be found here, on this otherwise dull album. I’m not just saying that because of the family fame either. Two things, originally drew me to this album the classy warrior cover painting and the fact it was released on Brain Records; home of Accept’s Restless and Wild. The pros seem to stop there and the music continues on more average ground.

The album starts off with the at-first promising Falling in Love which later turns out to have a crappy chorus. This occurrence seems to be a common flaw found throughout the album – poor uneven song writing. Even the best songs have parts (chorus’, verses etc) that seem to feel all wrong. For example; Ten Years Later one of my favourites because of it’s video-game-like verses featuring some great keyboard licks, Has a terrible repetitive chorus. Exact same thing goes for Looking for an Answer good pounding, atmospheric verses with a keyboard riff that is very similar to one that seems to be found sampled in a lot of modern electronic music. Looses all it’s atmosphere when the song speeds up for a boring riff-fest chorus. Anyway you get the picture, the only song that seems to keep some kind of consistency with (good) song writing is Take Me to the Doors which still isn’t really a great song, all in all it’s a pretty average album.

With an average album and bad song writing logically must have musicians that have little to desire. That’s pretty much the case here, After just listening to the album about 10 minutes ago the only things that stand out guitar-wise are the power-chord progression in the Looking for an Answer verses and the starting riff to Falling In Love. Not that it’s overly amateurish in technique just very simple and un-inspired, defiantly lacks hooks. Marco Paganini is okay at what he does, goes for the more snarling attitude-filled angle than anything more high/low and technique reliant. Kind of reminiscent of Holocaust’s Gary Lettice but not quite as punk and teenager sounding. The only really noticeably good musician here is the afore mentioned Barbara Schenker and this is speaking more as an AOR fan than heavy metal fan. Her synth lines are a major saviour for Dealers.. providing a catchy video game like harmonic base for a bunch of average songs.

Metal purists won’t like this album that much it’s not near heavy enough and too hard rock-ish for pop/AOR fans to really like. It’s kind of somewhere in the middle ground, In fact I can’t imagine there being a huge fan base for this band at all, But for them to release the amount of albums they did there must have been. If you’re in desperate search for more early heavy metal and like the way I’ve described this one I’d say pick it up otherwise I’d probably suggest leave it alone no matter how attractive the cover art is.