Meister’s Buried Treasure: Arch Rival – In The Face Of Danger

Wow was this “Buried Treasure” project ever hard!  It seemed like such a great idea at first and I quickly chose what I thought would be a great album to feature for my “Buried Treasure”.  As I cued it up for a listen it reminded me of another album, which reminded me of another…..which reminded me of another……which reminded me of yet another…..and so on and so on for three days now!  Enough! I’m stopping here and going to feature Arch Rival’s In The Face of Danger.  I’m sure that I’m not the only one of our writers that experienced this problem as I know that we all have a vast knowledge of music and immense collections….perhaps “Buried Treasure” should continue each month?

With the constant spin of albums added to the playlist being cut off I came to rest on Arch Rival.  Perhaps some of you have heard of them, but I think this will be a new venture for many of you.  With no official website or Wikipedia entries and a Myspace page containing only some songs from In The Face Of Danger along with a couple more from their later releases, information on the band proves rather difficult to find.  Their Facebook page with a meagre 419 likes does seem to be in fairly recent use with some posts dating back to July.  Arch Rival is a band from Dayton Ohio, made up of Michael Harris on guitar, Gary Rigmaiden (bass), Greg Martin (drums) and Steve Snyder handling the vocal duties.  The band was together playing the club scene for several years before Steve Snyder joined the ranks.  They released their début record, the aforementioned In The Face Of Danger in 1991.  Two more albums followed, Wake Up Your Mind 1993 and Third Degree Burns 1997.

This excellent collection of melodic metal starts off on a high note with the title track to the album.  I’ve included the you-tube link for the official video below and really that speaks for the record, so give it a listen.  “Time Won’t Wait” maintains the precedent established at the outset with it’s catchy chorus, while the third track “Me Against The World” begins acoustically before pumping up about a minute in.  “Rock The Night Away”, a standard rocker takes us through to the excellent “Fortune Hunter” and it’s grinding riff.  “God Bless America” comes before the cover of the Beatles’ “Revolution” and then we get “Mr. Attitude”, another stand out track.  The sleazy flavoured “Shotgun At Midnight” and “Siren’s Song” precede the album closer of “Can You Tell Me Why”.  All in all the eleven tracks add up to about 45 minutes jam packed with catchy, hooky riffs, decent guitar work, melodic vocals and choruses.  There’s not a bad song on here and this is a great find for fans of the likes of Dokken or Brighton Rock.  I’m surprised that with their radio friendly hard rock sound that Arch Rival did not become more of a household name….perhaps they were just another victim of the impending evil of the grunge era?

As Twisted Sister would say “Play it loud Muthas”

Cheers,
The Meister