Metal Reviews

One of my favorite all time 80's rock bands was none other than Toto. I still remember being a kid traveling with my folks across the country listening to the radio and hearing this band tune out classics such as Rosanna and Africa.

I wish someone here would start reviewing some of their stuff. I mean come on if you can have Paramore why not Toto?

They are very good. I like them a lot.

Africa is the only track from them that I have listened to and I love it. Haven't got myselft to listen to a whole album from them though.

Toto has to be the worst band on earth. Music for housewives that's what it is!

You are dumbass.

Iron Maiden and Judas Priest have an equal amount of credibility. All of them were on a major label, which made the decisions back then as they do now.

Here's what most metal fans don't get: All your beloved metal classics from the 70's and 80's were products concieved by large corporations, which had a their producer making the decisions, their marketing people creating the artwork and image. It was clever iea: convince people that hate commerical music that a new form of commerical music is breakin all the rules ad doing whatever the fuck they want. Very very few had that priveledge. Do you know where all those B-sides come from? rejected masters.

I just don't think some people get it, there is no way in hell a label is going to release a record that is less sellable than what they can possibly concieve and market.

The bands may write more of thier material, but they have zero control over what appears on what you buy in the store and what it sounds like. Too bad John Norum didn't get that memo in 1985.

Case and point: every fucking 70's hard rock band was told to release a pop record or carry their asses by the early 80's. Yes, Heaven and Hell was designed to be a mainstream kind of record. Martin Birch was an experienced producer that made sure to deliver a record that was easy to promote and sell over rock radio.

Nah man, they're all razor-edged tools of working-class anger aimed against the capitalist system and all who sail in her.

Bullshit.
You know why?
Because, regardless of what label a band is one, the difference between Priest and Toto is like night and day.
This whole "ALL metal is a construct of record execs used to pull the wool over all our eyes" bullshit is just that: bullshit.
You seem to harbor the delusion that we are all just led around by the nose, listening to what record producers tell us to.
Do you really think that some record exec instructed Sabbath on how Master Of Reality should sound? Or Uriah Heep? Or MC5?
Record execs made creative decisions about Maiden's sound and material? Really?



Yeah, whatever you say, man.

Back in the 70s there really were no independent labels, so of course those bands were on what was available at the time.

Did execs think there was a profit margin in signing those bands? Well, duh. But the fact remains that Toto is 180 degrees opposed to bands like Deep Purple, and Sabbath.


As for those classic 80s metal bands; funny, I never thought of Shrapnel, Megaforce, Neat, Metal Blade, (at the time, at least) Roadrunner, Carrere, Bronze, Combat, etc as "major mainstream record labels".

Just because someone thought that Maiden had enough potential for profit to sign them on does not mean that Toto shares the slightest inkling of similarity with Maiden, Priest, etc.
You honestly can't hear the difference?

No, because it is always used to justify the opinion that metal bands are far more indepedent and thsu inherantly superior than guys that make commerical music.

You honestly thought bands that were making over-comercialized soft rock/Aor had no passion, didn't write their songs or didn't love what they were doing? I said they are equal, not that everyone's a sellout.

What you tried to do is justify how good Toto was by using non-musical arguments, and failed.

Hey, maybe you fell for the image of Toto as a "super group of session musicians". You know, the poor underappreciated workhorses who were the real geniuses behind the music who are finally had their day in the sun.

Actually, you kinda implied that everybody is a sellout... but whatever.

I never said anything of the sort.
I have no quarrel with anybody doing their thing as long as their trip doesn't interfere with mine.

Even if it is all marketing (which I don't believe; do execs / producers have a say? Sure they do, but they are not omniscient puppet masters making the band dance on a string) the target audiences are completely different, so it doesn't matter.
Anyway we've been over this before, haven't we?

I don't see how this was an image. Their session work is well documented as well as the hits the members wrote. They were marketed as a Boston clone originally. Nobody gives a shit about the behind the scenes people and those guys get deals all the time. Lionel Richie had a backup singer and co-songwriter named Richard Marx. David Foster had an artist deal in the mid-80's. There is Bryan Adams too. There are a ton of guys that started out like that. I could give more examples, but no one will know what the fuck i'm talking about.

To my knowledge it wasn't well known that Toto were studio pros until they helped write some of the huge hits on Michael Jackson's early 80's work and they began to exploit it to sell records. Labels don't want people to know any new artist is both experienced and has been around for a while. It makes them look like a product, and makes people wonder why they couldnb't get a deal on their own merits rather than industry connections.

I've not heard too much of their work, but Falling in Between is a very good record. The title song has some awesome vocals that makes me want to dive into their older albums to see if I can find more gems.