SURVIVOR — S/T: The Hard Rock Center Of A Soft Rock Dynasty

Survivor is one of the arche­typal AOR bands.  The proof lies in the music, which is built on fine-tuned song­writ­ing with big cho­ruses, emo­tive vocals and lot of key­boards.  That said, they aren’t power bal­lad soft­ies all the time: despite a wealth of synth-layered hits like “I Can’t Hold Back” and “The Search Is Over,” they’re prob­a­bly best known for their hard-rocking theme song for Rocky III, “Eye Of The Tiger.”  Like their bal­lads, it’s got plenty of hooks and a soar­ing cho­rus — but it’s also got a dri­ving, stadium-rock arrange­ment that side­lines the synths in favor of chugging-and-stabbing elec­tric guitars.

It’s also worth not­ing that “Eye Of The Tiger” is not a fluke for Survivor: instead, it’s the log­i­cal result of an approach that began a few albums ear­lier on their debut, Survivor.  A spin of this album might be shock­ing to lis­ten­ers who think of Survivor as a keyboard-driven out­fit: every­thing on this plat­ter is guitar-driven, an approach that is accen­tu­ated by Ron Nevison’s tough pro­duc­tion style.  The ini­tial ver­sion of Survivor leads with their six-string riffs and — sur­prise, sur­prise — they do a pretty con­vinc­ing job.

However, one shouldn’t lis­ten to Survivor expect­ing fire-breathing fare on a Judas Priest/Iron Maiden level.  Instead, main song­writ­ers Jim Peterik and Frankie Sullivan apply pop-songwriting smarts to a hard rock sound, with a touch of pomp-rock in the arrang­ing to keep the sound inter­est­ing.  The record starts strong with “Somewhere In America,” the band’s first sin­gle and a song that sets the basic tem­plate for what will fol­low on the album: a strong gui­tar riff dri­ves the song and the over­all sound fits in the pocket of late 1970’s rock but the sing-along cho­rus and the use of thick vocal har­monies to sweeten said cho­rus reveal the act’s AOR potential.

The remain­der of the album treads a sim­i­lar path.  Sometimes light synth embell­ish­ments are added (as in “Can’t Getcha Offa My Mind”) but the main focus is riffage and lots of it.  The hard-rock high­lights here include “As Soon As Love Finds Me,” which off­sets its chug­ging verses with tricky dynam­ics at cho­rus time and sur­prise pomp-piano bridge, and “20–20,” a good-timey stom­per with a Southern-rock edge to it that sounds like some­thing .38 Special could have recorded (side-note: Peterik actu­ally wrote one of .38 Special’s early hits, “Rockin’ Into The Night.”).  “Youngblood” is another high­light, a rocker that dis­tin­guishes itself with a com­plex, almost proggy arrangement.

The group isn’t quite slick enough yet to dis­guise its occa­sional bor­row­ings — the swing­ing groove “Let It Be Now” sounds rather close to Toto’s “Hold The Line” while “Love Has Got Me” has strong echoes of Foreigner’s “Feels Like The First Time.” The lat­ter ele­ment is no coin­ci­dence, as Peterik has admit­ted Foreigner was one of the mod­els he used when putting together Survivor.  That said, the pre­ci­sion of the arrange­ments and per­for­mances make the bor­row­ings for­giv­able.  Vocalist Dave Bickler also deserves praise for his con­sis­tently strong vocals, which cover every­thing from hard-rock belt­ing to a more gen­tle bal­ladic croon to fit the demands of each song.

One other song deserves spe­cial notice — the penul­ti­mate track, “Nothing Can Shake Me (From Your Love).”  This power bal­lad pro­to­type is steeped in melo­drama, with the lyrics push­ing their lost-love sce­nario to meta­phys­i­cal extremes while the  all-stops-out arrange­ment steadily builds from acoustic sim­plic­ity to a pow­er­house blend of surg­ing gui­tars, pound­ing drums and atmos­pheric lay­ers of key­boards.  Bickler’s rock-operatic lead vocal is the cherry atop this tower of AOR power.  It sets a stan­dard that their future power bal­lads would fol­low but also has an unex­pect­edly raw com­po­nent of hard rock in there that gives it an added charge.  It’s the best cut on the album and a real show­case for what Peterik, Sullivan and Bickler were capa­ble of.

In short, Survivor is a strong debut that hints at what was to come: they were still work­ing out their mode of attack but their focus on craft pulls them through.  Better yet, it con­tains enough heartland-rock com­po­nents to appeal to those who are nor­mally inter­ested in AOR sounds (along with follow-up album Premonition, this is one of those AOR Albums That Hard-Rockers Are Allowed To Like).

(CD Notes: this album has just received a lovely reis­sue from Rock Candy Records: the punchy remas­ter­ing shows off Nevison’s pro­duc­tion to nice effect and Peterik is exten­sively inter­viewed in the liner notes, which do a great job of lay­ing out the first chap­ter of the band’s story.  It also includes “Rebel Girl,” a non-album sin­gle recorded shortly after the album that effec­tively com­ple­ments Survivor’s rough-hewn AOR sound.)