Trouble "Trouble" LP Promo Record Vinyl Metal Doom Def Jam Rick Rubin 1990

$

41

Up for auction is a promo copy of the 1990 Rick Rubin Produced "Trouble" by 80s doom metal band Trouble.

Cover is VG with some ring-wear and some missing ink where there maybe was a sticker. Some scratches on the front of the cover. Some light shelf wear. No splits. All pictured. (let me know if you want more.)

Record is EX with maybe one or two very faint marks on the record. Nice and glossy.

"More ambitious, but less pretentious than anything they'd yet done, Trouble's fourth album is the one they were destined to make eventually. Gone are the obscure elements, cheesy synths and occasional prog leanings of Run to the Light, as is most of the band's fatalistic doom. "At the End of My Daze" contains a monster riff Iommi (or any other metal guitarist) would/should be proud of, and its thick sound immediately announces the band's more groove-oriented hard rock direction. Oh, there's still plenty of crunch and headbangin' fun (even more), but except for the heavy lumbering intro to "R.I.P.," this is a band at work doing things tighter, catchier and more powerful than before. When Rick Rubin stepped in to rescue the band and give them quite a career boost (as he had done with Slayer and The Cult, too), he not only gave them the bare-boned sonic attack they needed, but also showed the band how to make their act more effective. By result, the songs have become more transparent for the most part - not only because the melodies are uniformly stronger, the riffs harder and the songs tighter, but also because the arrangements themselves have become better. Earlier efforts too often contained ambitious songs that collapsed under their own weight. On Trouble, also the band's "grander" songs (not that there's many of them) make sense and manage to keep your interest. Nowadays, there might be a few minor quibbles about the album's sound (the vocals and drums are perhaps a bit too prominent), but the guitar parts don't come much better, not because they found the perfect balance between heaviness and crispiness, but also because the guitar team of Franklin and Wartell reaches new artistic heights here: never were their guitar parts so perfectly attuned to each other, and never before were their guitar solos (especially during "A Sinner's Fame" and "All Is Forgiven") so well-constructed, melodic and personal. Even though the band progressed as a whole, this is above all the guitarists' album.

There's basically only one problem with this album and that's the fact that it somewhat loses its consistency towards the end. Blame the band for that, though, blame them for making the run of the first six songs a feast of undiluted, classic rock & roll. Like the opening "At the End of My Daze," songs like "Psychotic Reaction" and "R.I.P." are all about that holy ingredient of most hard rock / metal: the riff. These songs are short and concise, combining the bludgeoning Sabbath-inspired heaviness with a fresher and leaner attack, propelled by a well-oiled rhythm section and Wagner's Halford-Plant wailing which has gotten better than before. While he'd always been good at coming up with lines that sounded better than many of his contemporaries, this time he manages to give his lyrics constantly the right cadence, as if the flow coming from his mouth couldn't have been any different. Lyrically, his topics have also shifted somewhat. While he's still obsessed with a kind of vague, dark romanticism, an almost mystical play of light and darkness, hope and fatality, it's less based on a Christian creed. A song like "The Wolf" has lyrics that can only function in a metal-context (unless you're one of those people who think that putting cheerful, tip-toeing music to material like that is a good idea of "fun") and still refers to matters like sin/redemption, but it leaves God and his nemesis out of the picture. The song's also one of their best ones yet, with the standard metal fare (swift rhythms, fast vs. slow parts, solos, the works), but also an accessibility and grandeur that previously would've been a bit clumsy. Their three earlier albums would never have contained something like Trouble's centrepiece "The Misery Shows (Act II)," for instance. This seven minute exercise in grandness not only manages to incorporate their love for Led Zeppelin (the acoustic/electric approach, the folksy twist) and The Beatles (a simply melody and 60s-influenced harmonies), it's also one of the very few instances where a modern metal band gets away with this quiet vs. loud trick without sounding pathetic or pompous. Unfortunately, they don't manage to keep up this imposing quality throughout the entire album (that would've made it an undisputed rock classic): the Sabbath/Ozzy-references in "Heaven on My Mind" are obvious and album closer "All Is Forgiven" contains some stellar guitar playing, but they also are more standard fare than what came before. Also, "Black Shapes of Doom" doesn't flow as well as it should because of its awkward, out-of-place chorus, while the brief "E.N.D." (which stands for, uh, Eternal Narcotic Depression) seems to be included to show off some galloping guitar parts and nifty drum breaks. Still, the majority of the material on Trouble is of a stellar quality and easily on a par with what their heroes and main influence Black Sabbath came up with during their peak years, and this at least makes it a classic of the genre." - guypetersreviews.com

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