'Brothers Keeper' follows the formula established on '
Go' & '
Four'. It's a formula that lacks the chemistry created on the band's first two albums, '
Fair Warning' and '
Rainmaker'.
Admittedly,
'Go' and
'Four' were chock full of classy melodic rock, head, shoulders and several other body parts above most of the competition, but the production was overdone, both albums wading knee deep in gloss and clutter. However, these two releases cemented the band's position in the vanguard of European Melodic Rock , especially in Japan.
The subsequent breakup of the band is well documented. Splinter groups
Soul Doctor and Dreamtide met with varying degrees of success, but nothing on the scale of Fair Warning. Five years later, the band have reformed, minus guitarist Andy Malacek.
Adopting the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" adage,
'Brother's Keeper' faithfully plods along in the footsteps of '
Go' and '
Four', adopting the same more-is-more style, but lacking the inventiveness and charm of
'Rainmaker', and missing the potency of the debut.
In places it's one paced and one dimensional. In aiming to stand still they're in danger of losing momentum. The bloated arrangements often seem contrived, like a band struggling to forge its own signature. The lacklustre production - clumsy and muddled - is just begging for another producer to sift through the chaff and deliver us the wheat.
Worse, Uli Ritgen's once generous songwriting muse has become progressively more miserly, rationing each album to a meagre share of great melodies and outstanding songs.
Only Engelke's
'Generation Jedi' and
'Tell Me Lies' and Ritgen's
'In The Dark' and
'Once Bitten', four tracks that stray away from the album's established direction, get anywhere near the uniformly high calibre of those first two releases.
Elsewhere,
'Don't Keep Me Waiting' is a passable opener, European bonus track,
'Still I Believe' evokes the upbeat, innovative spirit of the band's early material and '
All I Wanna Do' is a bright, catchy closer.
Otherwise, there's an attention eroding sameness to many of the tracks, both in structure and treatment. If the album's thirteen tracks had been slashed to ten (or even nine) a much better album would have emerged.
That said, the track sequencing on the Japanese release makes much more sense, opening with three of the better tracks, then giving the album a mid life kick with Engelke's '
Generation Jedi', probably the outstanding track here. On the other hand, '
No Limit', the bonus track for Japan, is ordinary.
'Brother's Keeper' is still some distance ahead of most melodic rock albums released this year, but in terms of Fair Warning's illustrious past, it can only be considered a disappointment.
Written by
Brian Tuesday, August 8, 2006
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