I'm not sure what everyone here thinks of TORA TORA.

I bought their first album SURPRISE ATTACK the day I first heard their debut single WALKING SHOES.
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The album had a few good songs but a lot of yawn inducing tedium.

A few years later when I was in college they released their follow up, WILD AMERICA. The lead single was a tune called AMNESIA, which I think is blistering!
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The rest of the album was pretty good as well. A significant improvement over their debut. And then like everyone else from the metal scene, they disappeared after the tidal wave of grunge.


A few weeks ago I noticed on iTunes that they suddenly had a slew of new albums available. I went hog wild and bought almost all of them:

REVOLUTION DAY
• apparently they recorded a third album in '94 but the record company shelved it. It's a shame because this is a really good, hard rocking, bluesy album. I do recommend it.

BOMBS AWAY
• The Unreleased SURPRISE ATTACK Recordings is how this is billed. Some of the songs sound like final recordings. Some sound like demos. Some sound in-between. But the bottom line is, a lot of the material included here is superior to the boring, predictable stuff that ended up on their debut album SURPRISE ATTACK. I'm more curious how a rookie band managed to get the record company to pay to record so many songs that were never released?

MISS B. HAVEN'
• The Unreleased WILD AMERICA Recordings is how this one is billed. Mostly this sounds like final recordings. Unlike the unreleased tracks on the album above, they made the right choices that time. These tracks are not their best and wouldn't have fit very well with most of the WILD AMERICA tracks.

I never gave them much of a listen save some forgotten hearing of their songs back in the day on MTV etc.

I'll check them out.

I thought they were listenable but never came across more than a local band.
No STAR power.

never liked them, saw them live a few times but will check again. I think they toured with Dangerous Toys and Baton Rouge at one time. I think they also toured with LA Guns and Dangerous Toys as well.

I am really liking the REVOLUTION DAY album. Some Zep influence. Some Tesla influence.

yes its coming back, i saw them with Tesla as well. It seemed like every show in early 1990 or late 89 had Tesla, Dangerous Toys and or Tora Tora on it. I believe maybe the WASP tour as well. I am getting the 3 bands mixed up. Which of those bands had the guy with the Hamer Virtuso? He was kind of a dorky guy if I remember.

funny I just did a google search and it took me back to vvforums. I think it was the dangerous toys guitar player that had the 36 fret Hamer.

Nobody in Tesla had a Hamer like that. Or any kind of Hamer!

it was dangerous toys. Will try to find a picture.

poserboy71 wrote:I thought they were listenable but never came across more than a local band.
No STAR power.

THIS I will absolutely agree with. This band has absolutely no stage presence presence or star power. Their first album was disappointing other than the first single and a couple of others. (And like I said in the original post, it seems like a lot of the best material didn't make it on the album. Listening to the outtakes album BOMBS AWAY is a lot more satisfying.) But when you get to the second and third album, these guys really started turning into a great blues, roots and riffs rock band...IMO.

I absolutely love Surprise Attack, its one of my favorite albums. Loves a Bitch, 28 Days, Phantom Rider, and Gulity are all wicked kick ass songs.. The band was featured on the Bill and Teds excellent adventure soundtrack which at the time of its release was very hard rockin compared with most of the glossed up radio top 40 music that was available then. The only reason they didnt become big was that grunge and rap were the only game in town after 1988..
I didnt know about these new releases, thanks a lot! Im going to go buy them now..

no no even late 1990 into mid 1991 metal was still going strong. Slaughter stick it to ya didn't come out until 1990 and sold 2 million copies. Mr Big had big hit in 1991. I think 1990 was actually the biggest year for Rock/metal. Sub Pop Grunge was going on at same time and crossing over for a while. Alice in Chains opened for Extreme in late 1990. Headbangers ball was still big in late 1991 with mainly late 80s style metal.

even 1992 rock/metal was still somewhat strong. Hey Stoopid by Alice Cooper for instance.