Trouble (Band)

Trouble is an American doom metal band from Aurora, Illinois, formed in 1979 and considered one of the pioneers of the genre along with other bands such as Pagan Altar and Saint Vitus. The band created a distinct style taking influences from the early heavy rock bands of the 1970s such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Budgie, and Black Sabbath, and psychedelic rock of the 1970s. Their music has been some of the slowest tempos being written at a time when NWOBHM and thrash metal bands were playing at increasingly faster speed. The band could best be described as combining the riffs and tempos of Black Sabbath with the twin guitar attack of Judas Priest. A critically acclaimed group, their first two albums, Psalm 9 and The Skull, are cited as landmarks of the genre.
The nucleus of the band have been guitarists Rick Wartell and Bruce Franklin. Eric Wagner’s lyrics deal with different themes, but the early Trouble albums, such as their debut Psalm 9, are known for biblical references via their own brand of doom metal,especially because such themes were relatively uncommon in mainstream metal music of the 1980s, Trouble were then often classified as “Christian metal”. Other songs deal with social issues; “Bastards Will Pay,” for instance, criticises politicians as hypocritical.However, with their 1990 self-titled release, Trouble switched gears and carved a psychedelic doom niche for themselves.
To date, Trouble has released eight studio albums. During the 90’s, the band fell apart, but never actually broke up. They played at least a few shows with Kyle Thomas (Exhorder), before their original singer Eric Wagner returned in 2000, but he left again eight years later.
Trouble’s first two albums were critically acclaimed and are respected in the metal scene. The following album Run to the Light, however, was said to be “disappointing,” but a different direction was taken during the Def American era, when Rick Rubin helped the band to develop a new, unique style. The self-titled album gained “magnificent reviews in all the major heavy metal rags” and the psychedelic Manic Frustration (1992) was “critically lauded, cult-raved heavy metal masterpiece.” The 1995’s Plastic Green Head received good reviews, and “the album’s songs also exuded a palpable sense of wary acceptance.” However, Trouble was never thought of as a completely unique group; some critiques dismissed the band as a “poor man’s Black Sabbath”.Nevertheless, Trouble’s influence on the metal movement is unquestioned.