Trouble

Album review

Following the conclusion of Trouble's recording deal with Metal Blade and three years of relative silence, few fans expected to hear from the Chicago band ever again. But maverick producer Rick Rubin surprisingly entered the picture in 1990, signing them to his Def American vanity label and helping them record the most consistent album of their career. As suggested by its eponymous title, the record found Trouble going back to the essence of their gloomy, Sabbath-inspired sound, yet simultaneously injecting it with fresh ideas and reinvigorated energy not heard since their 1984 debut, Psalm 9. Indeed, the Trouble LP came absolutely stacked with outstanding doom anthems in the shape of the mega-riffic "At the End of My Daze," the organ-infused "The Wolf," and the white metal staple "Heaven on My Mind." Meanwhile, the impossibly heavy and catchy "R.I.P." and the especially psychedelic "Psychotic Reaction" (a hint of things to come) vied for supremacy as the greatest heavy metal song Black Sabbath never wrote. Then again, this honor might have just as easily been bestowed upon the band's mournful redirection of first album classic "The Misery Shows (Act II)" or the majestic denouement of album closer "All is Forgiven," thanks to what is quite simply one of the greatest heavy metal riffs ever conceived. Embellished by extended guitar harmonies and solos, said riff also confirmed Bruce Franklin and Rick Wartell's reputation as the best lead guitar tag team in doom metal history. The same championship belt might likewise have been Trouble's, were it not for the unfortunate condition of heavy metal (glam rock mania!) at the time this magnum opus was released, a tragic state of affairs that sadly relegated to obscurity what, by all rights, should have been a genre landmark.

© Eduardo Rivadavia /TiVo