Artist: Fair Warning
Label: Frontiers Records
Released: 2006
Rating: 3/5
The Fair Warning boys are back after a six-year “break” that had many people concluding the band was finished for good. Why? After the release of “Four” (2000), the band split into two separate side projects, Dreamtide and Soul Doctor, which offered a slightly different musical expression and sound from the one we’re used to hearing from Fair Warning.
“Brother’s Keeper” picks up right where Fair Warning left off with “Four”. The band hasn’t changed a thing. Not in sound, not in style, so the new album serves up a nice blend of “Four” and “Rainmaker” (1995). The atmosphere too. The guitar tone stays the same, with that sharp underline typical of German hard rock production.
All the trademarks and qualities Fair Warning are known for are back again! Big guitar riffs, standout soloing, expressive choruses that deliver the peaks of the songs, ambient synths in the background and a cannon-like, classic hard rock rhythm section. Add the outstanding vocal approach of singer Tommy Heart, and the overall production of the album often results in an epic vibe, the kind usually associated with German bands, played with real gusto. Brother’s Keeper opens in the typical Fair Warning style. The track Don’t Keep Me Waiting (as if one of the band’s impatient fans were shouting it, craving a new Fair Warning record) is a proper rock charge at a faster tempo, built on a pronounced, expressive guitar riff, while the band works its special magic with a gorgeous structure of layered vocal harmonies that sparkle in a highly atmospheric chorus that grabs you by the ears right away. The band offers two strong ballads, the punchy Wasted Time and the softer, dreamier All Of My Love, where Tommy Heart’s sentimental vocals shine. The album rolls dynamically through the variety of its individual songs. A fitting match for the opener comes later with Push Me On, followed by The Way, where the band steps on the gas again, while the mid-tempo Once Bitten, Twice Shy is a track with a solid groove and a typical dash of Rhythm N’ Blues, which is an especially clever trick that adds to the album’s variety. The second-to-last track, Still I Believe, interestingly leads the way in production that sounds more commercial, meaning acoustic backing and prominent keyboards, yet it’s shot through with soloing, and the star of the song is once again Tommy’s excellent vocal performance. The album closes with the witty mid-tempo All I Want To Do, which fades out at the end into clinking glasses and “oompah” noise that drops the listener straight into one of Bavaria’s beer halls. What bugs me here is the band’s decision to tack 6 extra minutes of silence and thirty seconds of that “oompah” onto the very end of the album, which is a seriously clumsy move in the age of mp3s.
Of course, 70 minutes is way too long for an album like this and for the predictable style Fair Warning cultivate, and the band could have cut at least three songs from “Brother’s Keeper” without breaking a sweat. This is a “comeback” album meant above all to make the band’s fans happy, and they’ll grab it without hesitation. “Brother’s Keeper” offers no surprises. Simply put, it’s yet another Fair Warning classic. A successful “comeback”, then!
Lineup
Tommy Heart – vocals
Helge Engelke – guitar
Ule Ritgen – bass
CC Behrens – drums
Production
Fair Warning
Tracklist
1. Don’t Keep Me Waiting
2. Generation Jedi
3. All My Love
4. Rainbow Eyes
5. Push Me On
6. Wasted Time
7. The Cry
8. The Way
9. Once Bitten Twice Shy
10. Tell Me Lies
11. In The Dark
12. Still I Believe
13. All I Wanna Do
Album length: 70.22
