Mountain Top

Vow Wow's final gasp before turning tail and slinking back in disgrace to their Japanese homeland, their international experiment a complete commercial and critical failure, 1989's Mountain Top represented a belated attempt to revive their hard rock roots and show some friggin' balls for a change. Recent albums had seen the group conforming without shame or a clue to the lamest American cock rock sounds, including enough keyboards to drown a litter of poodles and all but the toughest guitar parts. So while that trend was frequently repeated here (see "Move to the Music," "Speed," "Tell Me," etc.), a handful of cuts like "Black Out" and "So Far, So Good" actually displayed a surprising hard rock bite. No, this was still nowhere near enough to fend off the aforementioned synth abusers and their weepy ballad henchmen ("Love Someone," "I've Thrown It All Away"), but it was certainly a minuscule start on the path back to career redemption. Too bad Vow Wow's career was by now in such tatters that this change of heart came far too late to turn their fortunes around.