Conor Fynes 'Skol' - Faithful Breath (3/10)

Faithful Breath is a German band that put out a progressive rock record in the early 70's, and just as quickly, changed their sound into something else entirely. Fast forward a decade or so, and the band is barely recognizable from what they used to be. While its established that many surviving prog rock bands from the 70's changed their sound in order to keep up with the crowds in the 80's, most of those bands became pop outfits, whereas Faithful Breath went down the route of heavy metal. While this would tend to be a more personally promising prospect than hearing a prog band dumb down their sound to the four chord wonder, my first experience with the band's heavy metal material 'Gold n' Glory' indicated to me that there was not all too much to be excited about here. 'Skol' was released the year following 'Gold n' Glory', and right before they decided to change their name and start fresh as the speed metal act Risk. 'Skol' is a weak album from the proggers-turned- hard rockers, and virtually drowned in dated 80's hair appeal. While I still can't call Faithful Breath's material 'horrible', this is a clear step down from the comparatively fun 'Gold n' Glory'.

While I still was not a big fan of Faithful Breath on 'Gold n' Glory', I could enjoy it at least as fun, concise heavy metal; an obscure album that was all too lost in its era. 'Skol' changes their sound up a bit, but for the worse; the songs here sound like they have been taken down a notch in terms of speed and relative heaviness. Instead of a purely heavy metal album, this has now dipped beneath the threshold, into hard rock. The songs are more mid-tempo, there is less excess with the solos, and most things seem to have been toned down, if only a little bit. In any case, this is enough to make 'Skol' a weaker incarnation of Faithful Breath than its predecessor. The lyrics here are laughable, and the songwriting is extremely formulaic, relying mostly on the repetition of the usually gang-chanted choruses, wherein the band usually calls out the title of the song. Sound pretty familiar?

The band's performance here is not memorable, although its not bad at all, for what it is. However, the lacking sense of identity on 'Skol' does nothing for me, and Faithful Breath would remain a lacking Accept clone to the very end. Luckily, their music under the new name of Risk would be better.

Conor Fynes 'Gold n' Glory' - Faithful Breath (4/10)

As the 70's faded away into the prog-phobic 80's, many progressive rock acts realized that the only way they would be able to keep swimming would be to swim with the rest of the fish, and by that; meaning to change their sound to appeal to the new market. As was the case for Genesis and Yes, many bands went the route of going from prog to pop, a move which in some cases turned to be quite disastrous on an artistic level. Faithful Breath was a German prog rock band from the early '70s that did indeed change their sound, but not in the way that so many other proggers did. Instead of pop, Faithful Breath went for the new growing sound of heavy metal, and shown on their album 'Gold n' Glory', it is clear that they were not at all afraid to jump headfirst into this new style. Although Faithful Breath's decision to evolve into a heavy metal act was much better than the pop alternative they could have been however, the band's execution of the style is hopelessly derivative and cheesy, although I will say that there is some enjoyment to reap from this album from the once- proggers.

Anytime Faithful Breath's heavy metal material is mentioned, the German titans Accept are bound to be mentioned, and this is for no small reason either; Faithful Breath seems to have thrown down their old style in the favour of another band's. While it is taken for granted that every musician is influenced by something or someone, Faithful Breath's closeness in sound to Accept goes far beyond mere similarity. to the point where they easily fall within the territory of the copycat; a clone. Complete with rock n' roll lyrics with more cheese to them than a French cuisine platter, these tracks are fast, highly reliant on big choruses, and always have a little guitar solo or riff to keep in line with formula. Truth be told; the songs are not poorly written for what they are, but there really is not much to the music here to be worth more than a couple of listens at best. The necessary inclusion of the token power ballad 'A Million Hearts' is probably the highlight here simply for the fact that it is a breath of fresh air from the rest, but nothing here is bound to lit my heart anytime soon.

Faithful Breath's 'Gold n' Glory' is not a terrible album, but it sounds immensely dated, to a nearly humourous extent; the songwriting and performance here is never impressive, but always functional. Really, 'Gold n' Glory' is a fairly enjoyable piece of generic 80's heavy metal, but nothing more than that, really.