Icon - Icon (Capitol, 1984)
Current Gemm price: $4.39- $54.34
Price I paid: $2.99 at Second Coming records, Cambridge
Worth: $2.99
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I don’t usually have to admit I’m wrong, ‘cuz I’m not, usually. 99% of the bands I raved about as a Teenage Sleazegrinder still sound as good as I remember ‘em. Except for Icon. Thinking back on it, I’m still not sure what the fuck happened. See, despite voraciously chewing up every scrap of info I could back in the 80’s about every goddamn hard rock and heavy metal band that ever banged-out an over-amped powerchord, by the age of 15, I really wasn’t a flash metal kid anymore. I mean, it doesn’t take a whole lotta maturity to grow out of Twisted Sister. Although I wouldn’t exactly call it a grand leap in taste and sophistication, I remember most of 1984’s rock-out time being devoted to crazed punk-metal “cross-over” bands like C.O.C. and N.M.E and the porno-punk of GG Allin, The Meatmen and Nig Heist, and, like Black Flag and Venom and stuff that actually rocked, ya know? But when “Icon” came out and it’s two singles, “Rock On (Through the Night)” and “Under My Gun” started getting airplay on our local Sunday night metal radio show “Nasty Habits” (WERS, 88.1- it’s still on now, I think, although last time I checked, it was all head-crushing death and black metal stuff, and when I called up to request “Blondes in Black” by Anvil Chorus (1982, Leviathan records) a cuppla years back, they just laughed at me. Fuckers.), I was hooked. For flash metal, it was blistering stuff, with crashing, slashing guitars and commanding, iron-throated vox and a general sense of full throttle rock n’ roll mayhem. Sure, the songs were over-produced to a shameful extreme, so that the drums sounded like 25,000 drummers all at once, and the choruses were pure pop-metal shmaltz, but I really didn’t notice that at the time. Neither did any of the other surly headbanger dudes in town, and when Icon showed up in Boston, on a “Monsters of Metal” tour with Savatage and some awful prog-pop metal band called, uh…Illusion, I think, the same crowd showed up for the show that you’d find at a Tank or Manowar gig. Matter of fact, I think our own Greg Dellaria was there, as was Weekly Dig black metal scribe Goat Thrower. And, ya know, we all had a blast. My memory of the show might be a little clouded, tho, cuz the Icon gig was the first time I ever saw a pair o’ tits in real life. One of the girls-of-Icon had her tour shirt slit down the side, and there was no bra in sight. She was like, a 21 year old fishnet wearing blonde metal chick, I was 15 years old, and it was intense, man. Maybe that’s why I’ve kept fond memories of ‘em all these years, I dunno. More likely, tho, Icon were simply a band of their time, a snapshot of another age, and it’s possible that they really DID kick ass in 1984. But baby, this ain’t 1984, and “Icon” doesn’t hold up well at all. Damn.

Well, some of it does. “Rock On” is still a rousing, fist-pumping heavy metal anthem that almost convinces me that they really did kick a tremendous amount of ass. Coming on like a biker metal Steeler, it’s fulla cock and rock and bombast and a crazy Vinnie Vincent kinda solo, and the chorus (Rock on through the night/that’s what we came here for!) still makes me wanna kill somebody. Things start going all to hell pretty quick, tho. Despite powerful vox from Clifford, “Killer Machine” is a dumb, ham-fisted hair-metal tune. “On Your Feet” is significantly more rocking, but it’s a virtual re-write of “Rock On”, and two songs in is a too little quick for repeating yrself. “World War” is pretty funny, since it predicts the apocalypse in 1985, and, of course, World War III didn’t actually start until 2001. Nuclear fear was big in the Reagan era, see. Besides the subject matter, tho, “World War” struggles in vain to find it’s groove, and pretty much just sounds like a half-baked mess. “Hot Desert Night” is pure flash metal cheese, with Clifford doing his best Blackie Lawless growl, and it goes nowhere fast. And, ya know, filler before you reach side one of yr debut smells like trouble.

Side two's opener is a vast improvement over the latter half of side one, and if they didn’t derail completely by album’s end, they mighta held off their Flash Metal Suicide completely until 1985. Despite the meandering guitar-phasing and jazzy drumming on the intro, “Under My Gun” is a flash metal powerhouse of nasty, chugging riffs and menacing, kill-for-thrills lyrics (You’re gonna die young/Cuz you’re under my gun!” – pretty stupid, I know, but effective when yr 15). This ‘un, I still like. If they had stopped here, it woulda been a whole different story, man. But they didn’t. “Iconoclast” is a short, Queensryche-like instrumental that, in hind-sight, hints at the prog-pop metal gunk they’d soon sink down to, but it’s only like a minute long, so I don’t think anybody noticed. “Rock N’ Roll Maniac” was the album’s certified highlight in 1984- I sure woulda told you as much back then- but, uh, now it sounds just like Cinderella. I will say that I truly miss the days when viably commercial rock bands would write songs as stupid as “Rock N’ Roll Maniac” (“With my six string gun, I’m about to attack!”), but this one dates itself right outta the running, I’m afraid. “I’m Alive” is sabotaged by Clifford’s inability to sing the chorus (he could scream with the best of ‘em, but sing? Nope.), which is too bad, cuz otherwise, it’s a pretty smokin’ strut metal tune. Maybe if they ended HERE, things still coulda ended up better then they did. But they fucking didn’t. They had to go ahead and end the album with a ballad. And good lord what a woeful piece of utter garbage “It’s Up to You” is. Clifford can’t sing it AT ALL. The band can’t play it, either, and since it’s even more maudlin and pathetic than White Lion (or White Sister, even), I dunno why they even bothered. Believe me, they did NOT play “It’s Up to You” when they played in Boston. Anyway, there’s 2 classic flash metal songs here and a whole buncha half-assed filler and I apologize to everybody that I raved to about Icon over the years, cuz I was obviously too young to know better, or just tit-struck, whatever. I’ll probably STILL play “Rock on (through the Night)” and “Under My Gun” when I wanna get the Teen Sleaze mojo goin’, but, ya know, I won’t tell anybody about it. Chock this ‘un up to the folly of youth.

So who the fuck was Icon, anyway? Well, they were from Arizona, and they were originally called The Schoolboys. The Schoolboys! Yikes. Anyway, they self-released an EP in 1980 called “Singing, Shouting” which nobody in the entire world has ever heard except for Mike Varney, head honcho of Shrapnel records, the guitar-shred fetish label responsible for the US Metal comp series in the early 80’s, which broke a whole buncha bands over the years, including Steeler, Exciter, the Rods, and Wild Dogs. Mike discovered ‘em and planned on signing them, but after changing their name to the far saner Icon, they got snatched up by Capitol records right before Varney’s incredulous eyes, despite the fact that he produced the album himself. Sonsofbitches. Quiet Riot were the biggest band in the world by the time Icon inked a deal in ’83, and every major wanted their own version, and for Capitol, Icon was it. Only problem was, they were from Arizona and they used to be called the fucking Schoolboys, so they obviously had no idea how to dress like an LA glam metal band. When it came down to the day of shooting for Icon’s back cover photos, the band panicked, grabbed fistfuls of their girlfriend’s clothes, attacked ‘em with scissors, and Voila! A mid-80’s mascara massacre. Ultimately, that photo damned them in a lot of people’s eyes upon the release of “Icon”, cuz they might have rightly been lauded as sealing the gap between speed and flash metal, but you look at the pic for too long, with the burnt-out perms and the fuckin’ bangs and the white leather belt and the cut-up shirts and the Brooklyn-hooker hoop earrings and you think, “there’s no way in hell or anywhere else that these guys are gonna sound like music I can punch people in the face to”. And bro, I don’t blame ya, but like I said, we had all already heard them on the radio, so we kinda ignored the dumb clothes. So, despite the fruity lipstick and hairspray, Icon enjoyed a good year or so of success playing destructo-flash metal for speed metal kids. That’s not what Capitol wanted, tho. They wanted power ballads and other elements of pussydom, so for the follow-up, they brought in a professional keyboard metal songwriter, Bob Halligan, JR. – who’s biggest claim to fame was writing a buncha bad pop metal songs for Canadian puffballs Helix- to ruin ‘em. And he did.

Although 1985’s “Night of the Crime” is considered some kinda classic by Euro wimp-metal types, for anybody that was a fan of “Icon”, it was a real kick in the nuts. It sounded more like Journey than anything else, and their singer, Stephen Clifford, split before it was released, ‘cuz he decided to give up rock n roll and become a born again Christian*. THAT’S HOW BAD THE RECORD WAS. So, ya know, for all intents and purposes, Icon was DONE within a year of their splashy debut. Capitol dropped ‘em, but they still managed to limp through the next few years, sometimes calling themselves “Assmaster” (!) to throw off the stink of failure, and eventually releasing another couple of tepid records – 1987’s “More Perfect Union”, and “Right Between the Eyes” (1989, Megaforce/Atlantic- the mighty metal label that launched the careers of Metallica, Manowar, and Anthrax was running out of dough and desperately trying to sell out to the MAN by the late 80’s, hence the merger). By ’89, thanks the Euro-wimp factor, they had actually caught fire again, and toured with Bon Jovi and Skid Row on the continent. But when they got back home, US rockers wanted none of their nonsense, and they broke up. Since then, French retro-label Axekiller has re-released their albums on CD, and they’ve even played a few reunion gigs here and there. Ultimately, not a bad run, but I don’t even have enuff fingers to count the amount of times that Icon committed flash metal suicide over the years.

That show did fuckin’ rock, tho.

Further:
Icon fansite

*Clifford musta already been going off the deep end with the Christian stuff when they were writing “Icon”, since songs like “Hot Desert Night” and “World War” is rife with pseudo-religious apocalyptic imagery

-Sleazegrinder
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