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Album Review :
 Fireflight - For Those Who Wait

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Band: Fireflight

Title: For Those Who Wait

Label: Provident Label Group/Flicker Records

Release Date: February 9, 2010

Reviewer: Joshua Clark

Track Listing:

  1. For Those Who Wait
  2. Desperate
  3. Fire In My Eyes
  4. Core of My Addiction
  5. What I’ve Overcome
  6. Name
  7. New Perspective
  8. You Give Me That Feeling
  9. All I Need to Be
  10. Recovery Begins

There are only a handful of female-fronted rock bands that I would say I enjoy among my mass of male-fronted rock band favorites. Fireflight happens to be one band that lands in that small list.

The album starts off with the title-track and in it the band has adopted the all too popular symphonic string usages. But to the bands credit they use them to great effect and launch into what Fireflight does well, their energetic battle cries. The track has that epic feeling but taking a slower approach than most Fireflight tracks.  It reminds you a lot of a RED or Skillet track. Even so this is a strong opener and grabs your attention for what’s to come.

The band launches right into the heavier, rougher lead single “Desperate.” This is easily the best track on the album and a very good choice for the lead single. This song features Dawn Richardson’s powerful voice and mixes nicely with guitarist’s Justin Cox’s voice; whose voice you will see pop up every so often in the album. This song has powerful message and insanely catchy hook to draw you in with.

The next few tracks have the typical heavy FIreflight sound and deliver exactly what you would expect from band.  “Fire In My Eyes” is probably the heaviest track on the album and sounds great.  “Fire In My Eyes” and “Core pf My Addiction are true arena rock anthems and are pulled off quite well.

“What I’ve Overcome” slows things down a bit and features more of Dawn’s softer vocals. These tracks features some of my favorite lyrics off the album and are really easy to relate to, check out the chorus:

If only you could see me yesterday/Who I used to be before the change/You’d see a broken heart/You’d see the battle scars/It’s funny how words can’t explain/

How good it feels to finally break the chains/I’m not what I have done/I’m what I’ve overcome/

“Name” switches things up in the middle of the album by being an acoustic ballad. This song is really raw and simply beautiful. The lyrics to this song reach down deep especially when delivered with Dawn’s tender vocals when she’s singing:

He sees you/ He’s near you/He knows your face/He knows your pain/He sees you, and He loves you/He knows your name/He knows your name

The only downside to where “Name” is placed is all the energy that Fireflight had with the prior tracks comes to a complete stop. It just becomes awkward when everything practically stops and then you jump right into another heavy track. On top of that this next half of the album didn’t seem as great to me as the first. This isn’t too say that any of these tracks are bad, because they aren’t. But the tracks in the first half come off of so strong it just makes most of these seem not as significant or as grand. The exception would be “You Give Me A Feeling” which is both a very effective heavy and energetic track. The other exception would be the album finisher, which is another beautiful ballad. This song has darker touch compared to “Name”. There is a very moody musical atmosphere and is almost chilling with Dawn’s haunting, hushed vocals. This works as a perfect closer and ends with a powerful line:

It all comes down to this/The quiet in the end/I listen for Your voice/Recovery begins

For those who have been following Fireflight since their debut The Healing of Harms, there probably were no suprises of what you would hear on this album. A lot of comparisons can be drawn between this album and there 2nd Unbreakable, as far as sound is concerned. But what we get here is a well-polished straight up rock effort. Whether this is better than Unbreakable or not is up to debate. I don’t think there is a song on this album that was as strong as the track Unbreakable. As well as the number of other highlights on that album, it is easy to see this album sitting in Unbreakable’s shadow. Nevertheless this album is a solid follow-up to Unbreakable, it is filled with anthems of Fireflight talking about desperation, that feeling of loneliness, and being addicted to God.

Overall: In this album we see Fireflight becoming very comfortable with their heavier brand of radio rock. This is a well thought out, complete rock album with Fireflight taking what worked on Unbreakable and fine-tuning those aspects here. Dawn’s powerful vocals once again help lead these engaging rock tracks. The band knows how to rock and any rock fan who has passed up on this band before may want to rethink that because your missing out on some solid stuff. Musically this isn’t going to blow down the doors; that really isn’t what this album is about anyway. For Those Who Wait shows that Fireflight has the skill down of making a great rock song that a number of rock fans can sink their teeth into and excels here once again.