When I first received this CD I was not sure what to think of it. FAITH AND FIRE was formed by Tony Moore and Mike Flyntz, former and current members of Riot, Danny Miranda from Blue Oyster Cult and John Miceli from Rainbow. With that kind of lineup what was this band going to sound like?

On first listen I hear a lot of influences from all of the former bands mentioned above as well as many others from the same era such as UFO, Michael Schenker, Scorpions and so an.

FAITH AND FIRE are a great modern take on classic metal sound mixing the likes of classic rock/hard rock and power metal.

The first 3 songs, Ready, Villanelle and Everything are similar in that they bring you back, lyrically and musically to a place where you can feel the song writers want you to be. Accelerator is an experiment in bringing the sound of neo classic rock/metal to today’s metal fan. This is something FAITH AND FIRE does quite well, maybe too well or more to the point too often.

The song Radio Superstar stands out as the catch of the CD and adds a nice progressive feel while speeding things up just a bit. Fallen has a nice clean fast metal riff with some great double bass work.

For the blues rock enthusiasts the song FAITH AND FIRE is right up you ally with some classic rock riffs. Breath and Angel are both ballads and are quite well done.

Unfortunately the rest of Accelerator is more of the same. I wanted to love this CD, but I can only like it. I can’t quite put my finger on it but it’s almost as if they spent so much time trying to recapture a classic sound that they didn’t put enough effort into the songs themselves.

This is a good CD for those who love classic rock/metal but not a great one.