ROCK LIONS

I am a bit miffed to say at least. Where the follow up to this album Hard Breath was a pretty braindead all out heavy metal album, this album is a pretty well crafted heavy prog album.

From what I understand; two members of Faithful Breath reconvened again after the succesful Back on My Hill album and went in a totally opposite direction from that album again. The new Faithful Breath became a hard rock band and later an all out heavy metal band. They then changed name to Risk and released six reasonable successful speed metal albums. I have one big question: Why the heck did they not change their name to Risk after the Back on My Hill album ? It is like Coca Cola closing down their soft drinks bottling plants and opening up some wineyards under the same name. Stupid !

Angry rant over.

Rock Lions has a braindead cover artwork which it is hard to bypass without any prejudice about the music here. And it is the music I am reviewing here.

What hides behind the cover artwork though is a pretty good hard rock album. Yes, that is hard rock and not heavy metal. Hard rock as with references to Bad Company and in particular; Kiss. The new version of Faithful Breath must have been listening to the five first Kiss albums and copied their music. But there are still some Bad Company references here too and they are not as primitive two bars focused as Kiss were/still is. Faithful Breath is better musicians than Kiss. You can also find some early Ac/Dc connotations in their music.

The result is a pretty good hard rock album with some decent songs to boot too. A song like Down, Down is a good song with an infectious drive and verse. I just wish the band had stayed within the hard rock scene and not gone totally off the rails as they did on the following two albums. If they had developed this sound a bit, they could had become a good band.

This is a decent album from a band who lived of copying other bands and trends. What a waste of talent.

2 stars