Heir Apparent
Foundations I

According to the press material Heir Apparent did some ground-breaking albums in the eighties, two of them, and then they came back and did an album in 2018 as well. This one that is called Foundations I in this release by Vic Records was first released as a demo by the band when they were called Nemesis back in 1983 and then the first demo as Heir Apparent in 1984. It was then released as Foundations in 2016 and now together with Foundations II released again. An hour of Demo music is what we are getting, have you ever thought of that as an exciting prospect? Me neither.

It is old American slightly progressive heavy metal, akin to the earlier works of Fates Warning, Crimson Glory, Queensrÿche, Savatage and the likes. If they were ground-breaking with their two albums in the eighties, they were far less so with their demos. Many bands did similar stuff at the same time, but of course this is the style that went on to be Operation Mindcrime, A Pleasant Shade of Grey, and Streets to name just a few great albums that came from this pool of music. But this is obviously not as well produced to begin with, the sound is really dated and the fresh ideas kind of disappear in the flurry of pretty poor sound. The long playing time doesn’t really help either, but if you look though it all there are some interesting stuff here, something that could be the seeds to an exciting career that never really came for Heir Apparent.

More a curiosity than anything you would spend time listening to, there are more colourful albums from the same era. This is just way too dated, and the sound is too poor to be something that you really want to listen to. I don’t know if there are much that set these guys apart, I wasn’t really around in the time when these recordings were done so it is really hard to say what impact they would or could have had, but compared with contemporary stuff that I have listened to and heard it is far from the top. It is dull, and listening to it doesn’t bring on positive feelings, there are just so much better music to choose from.

Perhaps this shouldn't even have been released, especially not since it had already been. It is far from the most exciting album I have heard, and far from the best. Foundations doesn’t have anything to sway me in the direction of Heir Apparent, of those similar American band I would rate them somewhere around Crimson Glory, another band I find myself unimpressed by. So, the answer is that if you are considering this album, reconsider as there is at least a 70% chance that the next album you try is better.

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