Album review : TROJAN / TALION – The Complete Recordings 1984/90 (5 CD Boxset)

March 20th, 2024 by brianmc

Cherry Red [Release date : 28.03.24]

Boxset of remastered material from UK Thrash/Speed Metal band, Trojan, aka Talion.
5 CDs, 49 tracks.

CD1: TROJAN : Chasing The Storm studio album, 1985
CD2: TROJAN : Capturing The Storm – Live At The Dynamo Club, Eindhoven, Holland, 1985
CD3: TALION : Killing The World studio album, 1989
CD4: TALION : Live recordings from tour of Bulgaria, 1989
CD5: TROJAN : Rare and unreleased Trojan demos.

A working class sub genre, NWOBHM reflected the social and industrial unrest that stalked the UK through the seventies, into the eighties. The music was aggressive, fast and loud, built on emotions as much as musical dexterity.

Wigan Speed/Thrash Metal band, Trojan/Talion, climbed onto the bandwagon just as the road ahead went off tangentially into MTV land.
Their story is something of an archetype: early struggles; label problems; management problems, and as reward for persistence, a breakthrough and an eventual album release(s).

The founding member and enduring mainstay of the band, Pete Wadeson reconstructed Trojan after it fell apart in 1984. It was this new formation that wrote and recorded the album, Chasing The Storm. This is the centrepiece of the boxset, and in turn, a trio of tracks, beginning with the explosive title song, plus the anthemic ‘Icehouse’, and of course, ‘Backstabber’, a swirling, heavy metal maelstrom, form the essence of the album.

Later that year, on stage in one of Holland’s best known metal venues, the band’s enthusiasm proves to be almost combustible. The audio is limited of course, but nevertheless, the sheer full burn velocity of ‘Tonight We’ve Got It Made’ and ‘Take No Prisoners’ scorch a path through the cool evening air.

Once again, conflicting motives and clashing ambitions led to the break up of the band. Only stalwart, Pete Wadeson, and vocalist, Graeme Wyatt were left standing.

They resurfaced with a harder, faster, heavier new band, Talion. Immediately scoring a deal with up and coming minor label, Major Records, and recording their one and only album, Killing The World.

It opens with the heavily percussive title track. A grinding regression to the Neanderthal beginnings of heavy metal, performed at warp speed, with Wyatt reaching up successfully to the limit of his range.

The rest of the album locks into a ballistic barrage of armour plated riffs and thrashy speed metal, as good as anything coming across the Atlantic from the likes of Testament and Onslaught at the time.

And proving that the genre has no boundaries, they created a credible facsimile (with added blood, sweat and tears) of the album onstage in Bulgaria later that year,

The fifth and final CD collects 13 Trojan demos together. Rough mixes which include ‘Bring On The Night’ and ‘Young, Wild, Fast’N’Free’, inexplicably excluded from Chasing The Storm.

As back catalogues go, this one is as comprehensive as it gets. ****1/2

Review by Brian McGowan

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