Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Fair Warning
Label: SPV Records
Released: 2016
Length: 52:52
Rating: 4/5
Fair Warning are a lesser-known melodic hard rock band on the sunny side of the Alps, which, after all these years of grinding out turbo polka and bleary Mediterranean schmaltz, hardly comes as a surprise. We Slovenes just aren’t a rock nation. Still, even on our soil there’s a handful of »enlightened« music fans who, alongside Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Whitesnake and Scorpions, know Fair Warning very well too. Soon after launching their career, Fair Warning won over Warner Bros Music itself with their quality, and the label took them under its wing. WBM put out the first two albums, while the third, »Go!«, came out on Italy’s Frontiers Records. Today the band enjoys greater recognition especially on the Japanese market and, of course, at home in Germany.
The band, based somewhere between Hannover and Berlin, was formed in 1991 and has released seven studio albums to date, the latest of them, »Sundance«, in 2013. Now, »Pimp Your Past« is a release on which Fair Warning, for their 25th anniversary and at the urging of their Japanese label, decided to celebrate the jubilee by re-recording some songs from their first three albums, released between 1992 and 1997. These are, by the band’s own pick, the most important songs from the self-titled debut from 1992, which to this day is arguably still considered the most striking record of the band’s entire career (»Pimp Your Past« contains no fewer than five newly recorded tracks from it), then from its follow-up »Rainmaker« (1995) and from »Go!« (1997). The band has kept the same lineup from the very beginning right up to this year, which deserves big praise, with the one difference that it has gradually gone from a five-piece to a four-piece.
But since it’s only fair, not just to yourself but to your fans too, that as an artist you don’t get stuck in a rut of creative deadness, you have to create new things. Or at least record something old differently, if you’re re-recording anyway. Fair Warning stuck diligently to that here, refreshing the arrangements of every single song. The batch of re-recorded material sounds much more »stripped down«, alive and »fat« production-wise. In other words, the guitar phrases deliver even more dynamic dialogue and heavily oiled »groove« compared to the polished, glossy look of the originals from the nineties. Tommy Heart’s voice has gotten a touch thinner over the years and you can feel it when he climbs to the highest registers. He still catches them decently, but his voice is getting more and more »predatory« in the mid-range, where the maturity radiates the most sensuality and softness. A special charm of the freshened-up numbers are the guitar solos, where guitarist Helge Engelke really doesn’t skimp on explosively inspired, sharply cut solos with a refined mix of ultrasonic speed and musical compactness. Even in their considerably transformed shapes, they give all the songs a refreshed, mature art dimension, which fits right in with the evolutionary point the band occupies in 2016.
The move Fair Warning chose will first and foremost help fans wait out the band’s next studio release more easily, while for the band itself it brought a few extremely fun hours hanging out in the studio. At the same time, it will surely pay off in terms of reaching even greater recognition on the international market! So the move is, in any case, more than welcome! But expecting it to affect the artistic look of the new album in any way is a mistake, since every single studio album the band has released to date is a byword for high quality, and Fair Warning remain a stylistic constant. That means you usually get from them exactly what you expect.
If you don’t have or don’t know the earlier works of Fair Warning, this is the perfect starting point for exploring their catalog. Especially if you’re a fan of German (Bonfire, Frontline, Jaded Heart,..) and Swiss hard rock (Gotthard, China, Krokus), or if the Danish Pretty Maids sound completely like home to you. For this occasion, Fair Warning picked out songs with a really powerful contrast between the choruses and the verses. That means a high level of musicality, with atmospheric peaks in unbelievably catchy choruses, where there’s certainly no shortage of pomp. Realizing that these songs have passed the test of time quality-wise and still sound »evergreen« in 2016 is certainly neither surprising nor puzzling. Just as it should be for any high-quality, pedigreed hard rock! This time woven according to the Fair Warning recipe!
Fair Warning – Pimp Your Past (official promo teaser for the Japanese market):
Lineup
Tommy Heart – vocals
Helge Engelke – guitar
Ule W. Ritgen – bass guitar
CC Behrens – drums
Production
Fair Warning
Tracklist
01. Longing For Love (3:50)
02 One Step Closer (3:58)
03. Out On The Run (3:59)
04. When Love Fails (4:37)
05. Long Gone (4:39)
06. Burning Heart (4:13)
07. Picture Of Love (4:44)
08. Angels Of Heaven (5:34)
09. Rain Song (4:46)
10. Save Me (5:34)
11. Don’t Give Up (6:43)
