Review Summary: A large scale, original and creative little entry that does nothing for the band, but offers up something different for fans of the group.
In Fear and Faith are one of those bands that rarely ever have the opportunity to separate themselves amongst their genre. Their music is nothing original, but throughout their career they’ve managed to pull off a few fancy little things that are worth mentioning, one of them being the pirate based sound of their first couple releases. The
Voyages EP and debut full length
Your World on Fire we’re all lead around the bands ability to capture a time period within the sound of their music. The lyrical content and wide use of electronic effects helped to really give the band their own signature style. Moving forward though, their follow up release
Imperial completely rid of the pirate sound the band was so well known for.
After the release of
Imperial, screamer Cody Anderson left the band, leaving Scott Barnes as the only front man and to take on all duties both him and Cody we’re responsible for.
Symphonies features no new material from the band, but 7 new versions of the best songs from both the bands albums. Hearing this, you begin to ask yourself, what exactly is the point here? Well, I thought the same exact thing up until the end of my first listen. It’s pretty awesome to see a band do something different, and the idea behind
Symphonies is certainly original. All the songs the band chose to do translate into the symphonic sound extraordinarily well, though they must have taken a lot of re-formatting in the vocals, the band found a way to do it without making it sound awkward.
A wide use of instruments and sounds were used here to gain that large symphony feel, layered over one another is grand pianos, violins and pounding drums which all equal up to a grand scale sound. All of these sounds a style come together so well, and it’s noticed instantly in each and every song. There is never a problem with repetitiveness between songs, which you would think could become a problem because of the main sound of the EP. A few of the songs here have been extended to a very noticeable level. “The Taste of Regret” originally ending around the 4 minute mark has now been extended to over 6 minutes, filled with interesting string structures and a smart use of electronic based effects which fill in all that extra time that has been put on.
Vocalist Scott Barnes has done a terrific job here, while he’s had a noticeable voice change over the past couple albums, he’s still a great singer and uses his voice to the best of his ability in these tracks. Everyone needs a little help here, and he’s called in a good deal of friends to back him up in each of the tracks. Guest appearances by Nick Martin of DRUGS, Caleb Shomo of Attack Attack!, Craig Owens of DRUGS and Tyler “Telle” Smith of The Word Alive bring an awesome amount of variety to the vocals in most of the songs. A lot of these appearances are screams to take place of what Cody Anderson would have originally done, but it all sounds good and they’re placed wisely to never feel like there’s just to many different vocal aspects going on here.
As you sit down and listen to
Symphonies, you are pulled in by it’s sound even though the songs are familiar, they seem new all over again. I find myself marveled at the sound that has been pulled off here, and In Fear and Faith are one of the very few bands that could successfully pull this off with no problem.
Symphonies won’t give the band any new fans, but it’s an original little entry in their discography that’s nice to listen too every now and then. My advice to you, sit back and just let the scale of these tracks capture you like they did me, it works.
