On Streets of Danger

As befits what was quite possibly the first live album ever released by an Italian heavy metal band, Vanadium's Live on Streets of Danger was almost certainly not recorded entirely live on the band's December 1984 tour, as its liner notes proclaim. Rather its nine "live" tracks were probably cobbled together (along with the excellent, brand-new opening cut, "You Can't Stop the Music") from a mixture of live and album tapes in Milan's Regson Studios, and then enhanced with frankly comical crowd noises ranging from what sounds like hundreds and thousands, to 12 guys crammed into the vocal booth. Nevertheless, and with a little helpful suspension of cynicism, the 1985 platter stands as something of an unofficial greatest-hits collection for the Italian metal outfit's first three, probably best all-around albums. The title track, "Get Up, Shake Up," "On Fire," and the Bon Scott tribute, "Fire Trails," are all instantly memorable, straightforward, but fiery '80s metal anthems ("Pretty Heartbreaker" not so much) characterized by Pino Scotto's sandpaper vocals and endearingly heavy accent, underpinned by Mimmo Prantera and Lio Mascheroni's locked-in rhythm section, and regularly ignited by Steve Tessarin and Ruggero Zanolini's dueling guitar and synthesizer solos in the best Rainbow tradition. Both "War Trains" and "Don't Be Looking Back" are surprisingly effective power ballads, and while first album opener "We Want Live Rock'n'Roll" gets derailed by its terribly unconvincing fake-crowd singalong section, the album-closing medley of the anthemic "A Race with the Devil" and the speed metal romp "The Hunter" makes the difference up in spades. Who says imperfection is a bad thing? Live on Streets of Danger may sound dated and technically flawed, but captures a rarely memorialized moment in time, and some damn fine songs to go with its amusing deficiencies.