The first studio recording after the departure of guitarist
Michael Schenker
,
No Place to Run
set into motion
UFO
's critical and commercial decline. While only a slight adjustment to the band's successful
hard rock
formula, the midtempo
guitar rock
bore much more of a resemblance to fading '70s rockers like
Bad Company
than the coming
NWOBHM
. Fellow Brits like
Def Leppard
were cultivating a similar but much more exciting brand of simple, angular
built for the millions of
AC/DC
-loving Americans, while
seemed to be chasing their stylistic tail. Louder and way more energetic,
were poised to overtake the
rock
universe while
languished on
. Tracks like
"This Fire Burns Tonight"
call to mind
Jackson Brown
-styled adult
; meanwhile, any audience
might have built up over the harder-edged
Schenker
years was fleeing to acts like
the Scorpions
and
Judas Priest
, who were only getting heavier. To call
a middle-of-the-road miscalculation would be generous. The disc had already aged badly when it was released and that hasn't changed in the decades since. [The 2009 edition included bonus tracks.] ~ Vincent Jeffries