FAIR WARNING - melodic hardrockers from Germany with a reputation of 'keeping it real' and 'old skool'. Oi! it's melodic metal 'ala the eighties, alright!? Lyrically speaking, these lads are definitely trying to stay true to the fine tradition of schlock rock as they're coming up with fluffy titles such as "Angels of Heaven", Here Comes The Heartache", "Longing For Love" and "Out On The Run". Geez, it's no wonder melodic fans all over the world are feeling right at home with their music. They've practically been living with these sort of titles for most part of their lives anyhow. However, there's a a nice twist to Fair' melodies and the new live double DVD and triple CD - "Talking Ain't Enough - Live In Japan" (there's a total of 35 tracks) could work as the perfect X-Mas gift to anyone from your girlfriend/ boyfriend to grandma at the home. What follows is a quick chat with the six-piece live band of Fair Warning. We spoke about the true meaning and sound of their excellent new live platter, etc...

"We are quite content with the reactions on "Aura".  Reviews and reactions of fans have been very good, we entered the Japanese charts on rank 5 and stayed for some weeks. As a result we were invited to the Loudpark festival in 2009 and could tour in Europe and Asia in 2010. The idea of "Talking Ain't Enough - Live IN Tokyo" was to get as "real as possible". No overdubs, no endless redoing of parts. To achieve that we decided NOT to go into a studio but to record in Halls instead. 
To make it as realistic as possible we even invited audience (heh!) to the recordings/sold tickets respectively. Further we set ourselves a limit concerning how many times a song should be played before having the final take. Not more than ONE go was the deal."  

"we experimented with the size of the halls a lot and came to the conclusion that both, big and middle sized halls have there advantages/disadvantages in sonic quality."...

"Yes, there's a lot of experimental things at play. For the "loudpark" reording session we choose to use a broken microphone as one of the options for the kick drum. Turned out as too experimental in the end and we used the other mic. Another big part of the overall sound was to ignore ordinary studio recording microphone setups. Normally you want as little spill as possible. We did it the other way around. Not recording in separate rooms, all together instead. Well, ok we had to pay attention to the "spill" problem of course and set up the equipment in rather big places. So the physical distance could be avoiding that problem. We experimented with the size of the halls a lot and came to the conclusion that both, big and middle sized halls have there advantages/disadvantages in sonic quality. The first hall we recorded in (Makuhari Messe/Japan) was big, really big and it had a bit of too much "natural ambience". Therefore we asked the guys who rented that hall to get more audience in. We needed at least some 15 to 20.0000 people to damp this hall sonically. The guys of the hall solved this problem by getting some more bands, like Slayer, Papa roach and Rob Zombie in to do a recording too. Synergy-effect that is called as far as I am informed. The middle sized Hall (Kosei Nenkin/ Japan) sounded different again. Not too ambient and not too dry, exactly what we wanted. !"

..."Recording was quick this time. CD 3 took from 17:00-18:00 October 18th 2009. CD 1&2 took about 2:15 hours on the 22nd of January 2010. Video shooting didn`t take much longer. But it took a lot of preparation, almost two decades [:)].We achieved what we wanted, as real, as live as possible. Hard to pick a favourite song though. Look, as I said the preparations of this recording took almost twenty years. We experimented with the studio sound, but never quite got what we can deliver playing live. And to prove this difference we decided to release our studio experiments during the preparation time. Every year or 2 another experiment, entitled "Fair Warning", "Rainmaker", "GO", "Four", "Brothers Keeper" and "AURA". From these "demostage" experiments we took the songs we liked best to put in the final recording "Talking aint enough".

"Time, hmm, yes. Time is not always beneficial. There should be a law against time. Especially time you spent in planes and nightliners or waiting for the show to begin. Should be strictly forbidden!
On the other hand time comes quite handy when it's down to practicing or writing songs. The more the better. I think we found quite a nice balance. some decades of preparation and three hours of recording". 

"these two songs our record company didn't want to have on the DVD release. Said something about "too expensive". We didn't want to believe them and asked the original publisher"...

"If the record company interfered with anything this time? Not too much. Not at all concerning sound. Concerning the selection of songs a bit. We recorded two out of thirthy odd songs which were written by ousted songwriters. These two songs our record company didn't want to have on the DVD release. Said something about "too expensive". We didn't want to believe and asked the original publisher (Warner Chappell) ourselves. The record company was right, the publisher refused to move their butts before any payment." 

How would you describe the sound of your new CD to any potential new fan? "Rough, live, realistic, pure, real. We included many scenes as a eleven minute bonus feature on the visual release, Dvd I think it is..

It’s been a nice chat, and for more info check out: www.fair-warning.de

Interview by: Urban "Wally" Wallstrom, @ urban "at" rockunited.com, photos from www.fair-warning.de

(c) 2010 RockUnited.Com
December 10