New York’s Riot were probably the best description of underground metal for an American band from the late 70’s.
Written by: gdmonline
ARTIST: Riot
ALBUM: Narita
LABEL: Capitol
SERIAL: ST-12081
YEAR: 1979
CD REISSUE: Discogs Reissue List
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: USA
LINEUP: Guy Speranza – vocals * Mark Reale – guitars * Rick Ventura – guitars * Jimmy Iommi – bass * Peter Bitelli – drums
TRACK LISTING: 01 Waiting For The Taking * 02 49er * 03 Kick Down The Wall * 04 Born To Be Wild * 05 Narita * 06 Here We Go Again * 07 Do It Up * 08 Hot For Love * 09 White Rock * 10 Road Racin’
WEBLINKS: Site Link
Background
New York’s Riot were probably the best description of underground metal for an American band from the late 70’s. They were far more popular in Europe and Japan rather than their home base of America.
Revered to this day, the band released their first two records between 1977 and 1979, ‘Rock City’ and ‘Narita’; both these albums were pretty heavy for their time, and compared favourably to British bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden.
In fact, Riot were one of the few American bands to embrace the NWOBHM, back on the cusp between 1977 and 1980. Those two aforementioned albums go for silly money these days, but thankfully ‘Narita’ was reissued in 2005 on the Rock Candy Records label out of Britain, but even so, that CD is still pretty hard to find, as it was the very first release from Rock Candy at the time.
The Songs
The best known song off ‘Narita’ is ‘Road Racin’, which was featured on the Castle Donnington Monsters Of Rock LP, where they played support to Rainbow, along with that other American band: Touch.
Other recognisable songs on the album include the opener ‘Waiting For The Taking’, plus a cover of the Steppenwolf chestnut ‘Born To Be Wild’. The title track ‘Narita’ is named after a Japanese airport and is an instrumental on this album.
In Summary
Released by Capitol Records in 1979, Riot would find difficulty with the label in relation to their third album ‘Fire Down Under’. It would become a huge task to overcome, as Capitol were not very keen on releasing it, deeming it to be far too heavy for their liking. So instead, Riot left Capitol, and took the album to rival label Elektra, and released it through them, much to everyone’s relief.
The ‘Fire Down Under’ record label saga was a well publicized bit of drama from 1981. If you remember reading all the rock magazines from the time, it was huge news. Everyone was glad that it was resolved. As mentioned, ‘Narita’ is a pretty heavy album for its time, and is a welcome and very much overdue addition to the Glory Daze archives.
Riot on Video
Click to go to YTM album page.
