Winner/Loser

There's no question that Titan Force's 1989 eponymous first album was released at an especially propitious time for American-bred heavy metal with progressive leanings, being that it slotted right in between Queensryche's breakthrough statement on 1988's Operation: Mindcrime and their commercial peak via 1990's Empire. But consumer tastes and musical trends change so quickly that by the time their sophomore opus, Winner/Loser, was released in 1991, grunge had come along and flipped both MTV and radio station playlists upside down, wiping out almost any kind of heavy metal in the process. Not that Titan Force's independent label backing (or lack thereof) from the imminently bankrupt U.S. Metal imprint would have given them much of a chance to succeed, even at the best of times, and so Winner/Loser was essentially dead on arrival -- no matter its contents. As to that, most songs here showed the band to be moving in a somewhat less commercial direction -- more progressive and structurally complex -- than its debut album's more straightforward template, but only slightly. The title track, in particular, with its Iron Maiden-ish midsection (reminiscent of "Moonchild," only at double speed), delivered instant metallic gratification, and the eight-minute epic "Dreamscape" introduced numerous new tricks (tribal rhythms, surprisingly restrained guitar textures) that merely hinted at the band's potential prog prospects. Certainly, Titan Force also had the instrumental chops -- from Harry Conklin's incredibly high range (admittedly somewhat dated nowadays) to Mario Flores' virtuosic shredding -- to have transitioned into more ambitious songwriting domains, as indicated by the twisted time signatures concluding "Fields of Valor" and the jazzy breakdown in "Face to Face." But with their label's aforementioned collapse and the unexpectedly hostile musical environment that awaited them, Titan Force were soon relegated to ignominious independence, and, after losing Conklin to his reunited former band, Jag Panzer, never recorded a follow-up to Winner/Loser, making it obvious which of those two possible outcomes had become their fate. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia