Fight
K5 The War of Words Demos

January 2008
Released: 2007, Metal God Entertainment/CMM.W.Rott
Rating: 4.0/5
Reviewer: Anders Sandvall

The Metal God Rob Halford continues to release older material with his 90’s band Fight. Fight saw the light of day just after Halford left Judas Priest in 1992 and this album came shortly thereafter. The album consists of demos from what was soon to be the album WAR OF WORDS and the demos are Halford’s private tapes with his vision of how Fight would sound. Halford’s own favorite song wasn’t featured on the final album, but it’s featured on the demos.

If you’re into Halford and Fight then you probably know what style Fight plays, but if you’re not you should prepare yourself for traditional heavy metal influenced by the angry and aggressive sounds made popular during the 90’s. Halford hasn’t fully abandoned the screams and the high-pitched singing style, but he has narrowed it down a little. And he talks/sings in parts of the songs, but for the most part he shows his extremely dynamic and broad vocal range. The songs range from high tempo for the majority of the album to mid-tempo and even a few ballads.

I weren’t too impressed by Fight when they came out at the beginning of the 90’s; I was more impressed by Halford’s own band Halford, but now a over a decade later I actually enjoy them. 5 of the 16 tracks are previously unreleased tracks and all of the songs are written by Halford himself. The production sounds a bit primitive to say the least and leaves a lot to wish for, but you can overlook that because of the charm of the songs. Beside the 5 unreleased songs there are 6 new songs that are DAT demo mixed versions of songs. I guess that’s what Halford wanted Fight to sound like: raw, hungry and eager.

As a bonus Halford has written about his experience in those days and what his purpose was with Fight in the booklet. I guess this is a worthy buy for all fans of Halford and I had a really good time experiencing Fight again. The Metal God shows that he, despite that lack of success for Fight, delivers a solid performance and that he is truly one of the greatest singers of our time.

Killer tracks are “Into the Pit”, “Nailed to the Gun”, “Now you Die”, “Psycho Suicide”, “Vicious” and “Beast Denies”.