fair warning aura

Released: 27 July 2009 Label: AOR Heaven

German hard rockers Fair Warning have been churning out slick arena-flavour rock for almost two decades, and as you would expect from such seasoned performers, their latest release Aura is as polished a disc of classic 80s AOR as you could want.

Of course, the appeal of this album relies on how much people still crave Bon Jovi-esque stylings, where every song follows the same verse / chorus structure and vocalist Tommy Heart, capable set of lungs though he has, is always going on about being “in the night” and “on the streets!”

If that is your bag then you will find Aura a reliably solid album. There is little in the way of musical surprises but it certainly delivers more than its fair share of big choruses, wailing vocals and flashy lead guitar bursts.

Opening with the upbeat Fighting for Your Love, this is decent melodic hard rock with a European edge that won’t trouble the UK charts any time soon.

Hey Girl begins as an impassioned folksy acoustic number in a minor key, that grows in stature to a power ballad that is as good as any from the 80s heyday of mainstream hair rock, when this sort of thing was ruling the commercial airwaves. It starts jangly and builds up to some frenzied guitar work towards the end, and was only track that I could honestly admit to quite liking!

Elsewhere, another song stood out, but for all the wrong reasons; Don’t Count on Me, which was a terrible effort, consisting of a horribly claustrophobic two note guitar line over a funky bass line, that could induce nausea within thirty seconds of first hearing.

Here Comes the Heartache and Walking on Smiles are very radio friendly, and you may well find yourself humming them after you’ve heard them a few times if you are that way inclined.

There seems to be a fair number of fillers on here, Falling and Someday for instance, where the band really do sound like they are on autopilot. Even some of the lead breaks are predictable, to the point of sounding a bit like scale exercises at times.

Overall, this album is a reasonably effective Euro-rock effort, without being spectacular. It’s not particularly original stuff, and any band that name drops Snow White in a song title rather than Satan would have me worried!

by Steven Hargraves