Biography
Although Faithful Breath rank among Germany's earliest rock outfits, with origins stretching to the late 1960s, the oddly titled group remained unknown beyond domestic circles until the middle of the 1980s. At that point the band, much like their far more celebrated compatriots the Scorpions, attracted modest attention as an admittedly kitschy heavy metal act. From their inception the project revolved around guitarist Heinz Mikus and bassist Horst Stabenow, yet it cycled through countless lineups and stylistic shifts before embracing progressive rock during the first half of the 1970s. That phase yielded the ambitious yet commercially overlooked 1974 album Fading Beauty, whose roster included vocalist Renate Heemann, keyboardist Manfred Von Buttlar, and drummer Jurgen Weritz. Four years afterward the single "Back on My Hill" appeared in German shops, but the 1980 album sharing that title already featured replacement singer Jurgen Renfordt and signaled a turn toward conventional hard rock. The following year the ensemble pushed further into theatrical 1980s metal, complete with an extravagant and rather puzzling Viking aesthetic, while replacing Renfordt to operate as a power trio that also had Stabenow handling vocals. The ensuing releases—Hard Breath in 1983, Gold 'n' Glory in 1984, Skol in 1985, and the 1986 concert set Live—appeared in rapid order, yet international exposure never extended past modest sales figures and a brief East Coast American trek. In 1987 the last configuration of Stabenow, bassist Peter Dell, and drummer Jürgen Düsterloh abandoned the Viking-metal concept and transformed into the band Risk, after which former second guitarist Thilo Hermann later returned briefly to the fold before pursuing work with Holy Moses and the pirate-metal outfit Running Wild.