Talisman

Talisman is the debut that tied funk's suppleness to hard rock's force and showed the band's identity clearly. Marcel Jacob (bass), formerly of Yngwie Malmsteen's band, launched it from demos John Norum had rejected, and completed it by bringing in Jeff Scott Soto, also from the Malmsteen circle. Recorded in Stockholm in 1989, with Christopher Ståhl and Mats Lindfors on guitars and Mats Olausson on keys; Jacob himself handled most of the rhythm guitars and the drum programming. Heard backward from the polished later image, roughness shows — but that unsettled quality is precisely the appeal. There's momentum from before riffs, vocals and rhythm settled into one fixed mold, and the band's core emerges from the trial and error of each song. Following the opener “Break Your Chains,” the mood-shifting “System of Power,” and the late “Great Sandwich” makes each song's role and temperature easy to see. The advance single “I'll Be Waiting” hit No. 2 in Sweden and the album sold 33,000 copies in two months. Both the line toward their later signature works and a rough shine unique to this period remain here at once.