In Faith
There’s A Storm Coming

Apparently there is a storm coming, a musical storm perhaps. Judging by the reviewers they refer to on their website it would appear that they are taking the world by storm, mostly the highest mark in the reviews it would seem. And a search around the web indicates that those they refer to on the website aren’t the only ones, all around the web reviewers give high ratings stating it is a masterpiece and all of that. This has to be good then, I think. Then I recall that most (if not all) of these reviewers give only high ratings in their reviews making them promotors rather than critics. But let us not dwell on that, what about In Faith and their debut album? First of all it has a great looking cover art, and it has to be melodic rock/hardrock considering the backstory of the musicians who has been with many bands in that genre before getting to this band.

Speaking of ratings I could immediately eliminate the two highest ratings for my review of this album as the first time listening to it revealed that they have nothing that we haven’t heard before to offer. It is melodic rock/AOR according to the format, no news or fresh thinking there. It is a perfection of an old craft rather than own ideas that makes this album. The production is brilliant, the sound is excellent and the vocals as well as melodies are amazing. The songs are easy to take in and have enough depth to be played on repeat. It is eleven tracks on the album and they play for 47 minutes, minutes that shows a decent if expected variation. Fact is that this album is about what you can expect from looking at the cover art and band logo, maybe somewhat better produced.

I find it strange that humans has gone from being extremely innovative to just copying and perfecting old inventions and artforms. There is not much new ideas reaching the world today and that is true about both culture and technology. One could take In Faith as another example of how we has a species has stagnated, but then again it might not be wrong to perfect tried and tested things instead of innovating and creating new things. Because this is a perfection of the genre, not many bands does it better than In Faith. Their music is entertaining and wonderful to listen to and if I look to sheer quality I cannot think of many bands that slaps these guys on the fingers. Their problem is that no one will remember this album anyway as the timeless classics within this genre has already been done and to rank amongst these you need to make something different and something special and In Faith does not do that.

This is an album that a critic cannot fully like but a fan of the genre can, it is all that the fans want, it has great songs, great music, fantastic melodies, great vocals and all you want in catchiness and such things, it only lacks originality which is a big deal if an album is to go down in history and be remembers as one of the highlights of a year or decade. This album may be amazing but it will not be one of the timeless classics of 2014, it will be forgotten the next time a high quality album is being released on AOR Heaven or Frontiers, which probably happens already next month. But until the next AOR fix from those labels I can recommend this fine album as a fan of the genre will certainly have a good time listening to it.

Radio and Addicted are my favourite songs on the album, an album that works best when I don’t listen to it as a critic but more as background while driving or working on something. Despite this album being completely without fresh ideas or creativity it is a wonderful production well worth listening to if you consider yourself a fan of the genre. I would say that a storm isn’t really coming to the musical world but a pleasant summer breeze is coming. Be sure to enjoy it.

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