Search - Triumph :: Never Surrender

A worthy successor to Allied Forces 25 years later

Terrence J. Reardon | Lake Worth (a west Palm Beach suburb), FL | 03/28/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Canadian power trio Triumph released their long awaited followup studio album to their 1981 Platinum seller Allied Forces entitled Never Surrender in the Spring of 1983.

Many fans were wondering when first buying this album if the album would be either as good or better than its predecessor as the massive sales of Allied Forces made the band work hard to come up with a superb followup to their Allied Forces album.

I go with the former as did many fans who helped push the album to #26 on the Billboard album chart and Gold status here in the States.

Never Surrender picked up where its predecessor left off.

The album features some of the band's best tracks like singer/guitarist Rik Emmett's massive hit single "A World of Fantasy" and the superb six and a half minute title cut.

Singer/drummer Gil Moore's best vocal performance on this album is on the hard rocker "When the Lights Go Down" which (at first) sounds like an acoustic blues song at first before rocking out.

Other standouts are the opening "Too Much Thinking" (which had samples of the late great President Ronald Reagan at the intro of the track), the rock radio hit "All the Way" and of course Moore's hard rocker "Battle Cry".

The three instrumentals (the classical guitar intro "A Minor Prelude", the powerful second half starter "Overture (Procession)" and the closing electric guitar and classical guitar solo piece "Epilogue (Resolution)") and the rocking "Writing on the Wall" are also great songs as well.

Despite the success of Never Surrender, the band's US label at the time RCA wrongly picked a fight with Triumph and the band fled the label after this album and signed to MCA which was run by Eagles manager Irving Azoff at the time and switched the ownership of the band's music from RCA to MCA (Azoff paid RCA for the band's master tapes and bought out the band's RCA deal and he would eventually revert the rights of the band's music over to Triumph) and then in 1995 to Triumph's own label TRC (now known as TML whom re-mastered the album and re-released it in 2004).

IMHO, rock bands should not be on RCA as they had tended to be cheated and mistreated (Styx, Triumph, The Kinks and David Bowie were all shafted by that label). Aside that bit, Never Surrender STILL ROCKS!

Highly recommended!"

One of the forgotten classics.

Michael Smith | Chicago, IL | 01/18/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Telling of my age, but I saw Triumph in '82 on their Never Surrender Tour in the Omni in Atlanta, Georgia. Foghat opened for them. This album is one of the great forgotten classics of Rock and Roll."

The Best Album Ever!

D. Peck | 03/16/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Not only is this the best Triumph album ever. It's the best hard rock album of all time! Ok I'm a little biased since Triumph is my favorite group. Simply put this album rocks from beginning to end. There are no fillers on this album! Every song is a classic in it's own right. Put them all together and you have one classic album!I never get tired of listening to this album! Every time I put it on my stereo I feel like I'm rocking like nobody else is in the world! If your a Triumph fan and you don't have this CD. Buy it as soon as possible! If you like good hard rock and you don't have any Triumph CD's. Buy this album and soon you will find yourself buying more of the Rock And Roll Machine!"