I still remember buying SIT the day it came out, and I thought the synths were a bit jarring. Especially for a 17 yr old that had spent the last two years listening to nearly every band that had been signed to Metal Blade, Combat, or Megaforce records. The new sound just felt very “watered down” by comparison.
But there are great moments. I personally think that the riff in Sea of Madness is one of the heaviest things on the album, the chorus is probably the strongest of the entire album, so it always confused me that most people rank it so low on the album. Most of the other choruses seem really lazy to me. This is the album I usually point to as beginning the trend of repeating a single line over and over again for the chorus.
Sea of Madness is my favorite, and SIASL is a very strong single. That’s probably the song where the synths really work with the song. I didn’t used to like Heaven Can Wait, but the live version takes it to a whole new level and now I love it. And I should try to revisit Alexander the Great. I haven’t heard it in forever. I just remember that it was kind of the follow up “epic” to ROTAM…and on that level it was a massive fail. But that was 35 years ago, so it’s probably easier to listen to it on its own merits these days.