Triumph has achieved phenomenal popularity in the Eighties by remaining steadfastly mired in the quicksand rock clichés of the Seventies. The band offers nothing on Never Surrender that hasn't been yodeled and bashed heretofore by a hundred mutant hoseheads from Canada to Castle Donington. The LP's ten tunes, which run the gamut from the innocuous to the unlistenable are meant to cohere into a larger concept bout battling to save the ??rld I ??ruth, it's the same old th?? rehash ?? Starship-?? sc??ce fiction banal soc?? and the standard exhortations to "rock & roll!"

Musically, guitarist Rik Emmett plays an overbusy, deracinated version ??endrix' more fractured mon?? while the rhythm section inauls ?? beat much in the manner of a pit band at a Las Vegas strip club. This group would like to be kings and mythmakers to that segment of the rock audience that never outgrew fantasy-adventure comic books. W?? they are is just another faceless band hiding behind a logo (the name Triumph and a big V for Victory superimposed upon a vigilant eagle) and various other bombastic trappings (end-of-the-world light shows, Concorde-level volume) in order to conceal a grand dearth of originality. (RS 390)

PARKE PUTERBAUGH