Riot

Inishmore (Metal Blade)
by Scott Hefflon

After 20 years, and a rather tumultuous 20 years at that, Riot lands on Metal Blade (was it between MB and CMC, fellas?) and kicks out their first domestic release since ’90 (excluding ’93’s Riot Live on MB). In a sense, this NY-based band shows they’ve been living off Japan’s frenzy for ’80s metal for so long, they couldn’t move on if they tried. While guitarist Mark Reale is obviously talented, we ran Yngwie J. outta town, we “advised” Chris “Imp” Impellitteri (if ya missed him, ya didn’t miss much) that, even with Graham Bonnet, his fretboard gymnastic days were numbered, and perhaps someone oughtta tell Mark to (I can’t resist) get real. The ’80s are over and so are layered harmonies, classical guitar wanking, vocal warbling, and Whitesnake-sounding, lyrically-inane, hard rock posturing. Gone the way of the dodo, dumdum.