„True doom metal“ is what the Swedes call their own style, but it inadequately covers the musical spectrum of FAITH. Besides of leaden, slow-motion thunderstorms, subtle violin-accompanied symphonic passages, Folk-like moments introduced and blithely distinctive by famous Nyckelharpa, brasses (sampled ones) and even trips into Gregorian fields as in Necropolis can be found on Blessed?. Necropolis is one of the highlights and when this song dies towards its end one automatically starts listening to the own heartbeat, always again pervaded by heavy guitar riffing and leaded by Christer Nilssons slighly moaning, but suiting singing. In songs like Big Red, Nebraska and Condemned hints of Danzig and Black Sabbath can be heard out, but generally speaking FAITH make music on their own. Sometimes, as in Father Pious, ideas get too widely rolled out, yet more often FAITH open themselves to melodic and progressive daringness. Blessed? develops constantly and is, although not all of a piece, surprisingly homogeneous. To shape up this self-contained gesture FAITH had enough time for being founded back in 1984. And that’s the way Blessed? sounds like: matured and surely proceeding, full of hymns of black melodiousness. Probably not really „True doom metal“ but a darkly rocking manifest of ideas and manifold influences. Blessed? is more progressive than some too exerted experiments in virtuosity.
P.S. The Nyckelharpa, which again has an appearance in the last instrumental track with the funny (or sarky) name Leipzigpolska, is a traditional Swedish instrument, a key harp or keyed fiddle, kind of similar to a hurdy-gurdy.