15. Y&T Black Tiger 1982 (A&M)
Heavy Metal
When the west wind blows, it’s surely time to go.
Album
Despite having a powerful melodic metal sound, Y&T hadn’t made that much of an impact on the US album charts with their best album to date the shattering
Earthshaker, which had been relased the previous year (see review) So on the release of 1982’s
Black Tiger the band were hoping to crack this particular nut this time around! Despite the huge commercial appeal of the album especially to a viable American audience, the album again yet again failed to enter the US top 100, but did manage to do so in the UK where it reached an inconspicuous no.53 spot on the UK album charts. The lack of chart success was certainly surprising given the band’s big live reputation on both sides of the Atlantic, along with their local reputation at the inspirational Starwood Club in LA. This was a location which was literally on fire around this time with its assortment of up and coming glam metal acts, who were honing their skills there on a weekly basis. Commercial success would eventually come to the band some years later and as is often the case it came after the best studio stuff had been released and it was also certainly nowhere near as grand as the band surely warranted in terms of their ability. The album
Black Tiger is yet again dominated by the band’s trademark high volume sound and yet again its frontman David Meniketti that is the star of the show here and by and large the album matches the consistency of the previous
Earthshaker overall, despite the fact that it does contain some obvious filler on the latter part of its b-side. The track “Open Fire” is the explosive album opener and it’s a track that would become a mainstay of the band’s live repertoire from now on and would also be covered by Swiss metal band Gotthard. “Don’t Wanna Lose” is another great commercial track right out of the Journey top drawer, a sound the band did as well as their Californian counterparts (just with more volume usually) “Hell or High Water” is a loud-mother of a track that has that anthem feel about it and then there is the gripping “Forever” which showcases the soulful voice of David Meniketti to wonderous effect. This lengthy tirade of quality tracks finally comes to an end with the title track “Black Tiger” and it’s on the strength of these tracks that the album
Black Tiger can go toe-to-toe with
Earthshaker. But it’s right after the title track that the album seriously nose-dives in terms in quality and luckily it only lasts for a couple of tracks with duffers like “Barroom Boogie” and “My Way or the Highway” and luckily things are salvaged with “Winds of Change” a very good track and nothing to do with the later Scorpion’s release of a similiar same name, which was “Wind of Change” of course. Y&T were always a big volume band and they’re one of my favourite listens from the early 1980’s, where metal went through a phase of being big, bold and brassy. This type of metal would soon really suffer though, due to the eventual onslaught of the extreme metal genres that would become a mainstay of the metal scene from the mid 1980s onwards.