Aryon

Aryon could have been the biggest smash hit on the planet for the entirety of the 1980s and it wouldn’t matter; they would still be remembered mainly for having one of the most messed-up album covers in the history of vinyl. Nothing says “We’re rebels of the night in the early Eighties” like a black and white photo showing the band members peeking through a 4-year old girl’s bedroom window while she plays with the creepiest set of toys designed in 1953. There is no logical explanation for why someone actually assembled this image, let alone proposed using it for the album cover, LET ALONE got it approved and put on the album cover. The entire reason society has multiple levels of bureaucracy is to ensure that monstrous errors such as this do not slip through the cracks and ever see the light of day. But sometimes the system breaks down and allows Aryon to creep out the next five generations of record collectors.

If you can get past the cover- and that is no small task- the album is actually pretty good. Musically it’s very emblematic of what many American metal bands were doing in the earliest 1980s before Metal split into thrash and glam camps for most of the decade. We’re talking metal that took its cues from the fun side of 70s hard rock and simply cranked things up some more. Early Riot is the best known and loved of the bunch, but any number of other bands treaded similar waters at that time (e.g., Crysys, Voltz, etc etc). The tracks on ‘Rebels of the Night’ do a good job of being fun and catchy while having enough metallic bite to keep any generic hard rock comparisons out of the picture; they may seem lightweight by modern standards, but this was solid metal back in 1983.

The vocals are pretty average, but the guitarwork is great and rarely misses a chance to throw some hot licks into the mix. If you grew up in the 1980s as I did, hotshot guitar heroics will put a smile on your face almost as quickly as memories of Saturday morning cartoons and Daisy Duke. Overall the album also has a good dose of panache that more than balances out the band’s lack of experience…let’s be polite and call it ‘youthful enthusiasm’. Highlights of the track list include ‘Love and Pain’, ‘Leave Town’, and the slower ‘Heat of the Night’. There are very few misses; only ‘CV 17’ and the rather generic ‘Rock and Roll Lover’ come up short. Closing track ‘In These Days’ is basically a long outro as the band mutters about the troubles of the day, which if nothing else reminds us all that the world had a lot of sucky problems long before Brexit, mass shootings, and Taylor Swift dominated the headlines.

The band also released a single that included two of the album’s tracks, ‘Killer’ and ‘Alcatraz’. It’s a lot easier to find than the LP and is representative of their sound.

To conclude, it’s not overselling ‘Rebels of the Night’ by much to call it a lost gem. It is indeed a strong album and can justify its rather high price tag based on its musical merits; you’re not just paying for some piece of rare Collector Porn that sounds like crap if you actually, you know, PLAY the record. Just don’t post pictures of yourself holding a copy unless you want to get visited by Child Welfare Services.