Description

France produced many great metal bands in the early 80s (think of all the lovely bands on Devils records) but not many had any bigger success. An album that always pops up on a lot of want list from the most die hard collectors is the second album, Black And White, with Fine from Bordeaux. This vinyl is one of those albums that usually goes for approx 100 euro. The band has an interesting line-up as drummer Bruno Sarroy played with Morsure, guitarist Loran Laurent in Metalgods in early 80s and guitarist Chris Bonardo played with Steel Angel who released two great metal albums, And The Angels Were Made Of Steel (1985) and Kiss Of Steel (1986). Both Metalgods and Steel Angel were from Bordeaux and when Steel Angel broke up Bonardo and Sarroy met up with vocalist Jean-Philippe Demarcq and bass and keyboardplayer Geoff T.Piers and founded Fine. Fine recorded two albums, Up And Down (1987) and Black And White (1988). Both were released ont eh small Korus Records, a label founded by the bands manager Patrick Sebile. The first one was recorded in a 24-track studio in September of 1987. At the same time the band goes out on tour between September 19th and October 17th. First they support Tokyo Blade on their French dates and then the band goes on for more dates in France. When Up And Down are released its received very positive by French critics, see Hard Force no.16 of 1988. A new mini tour in France is set up as well as a gig in London with Nightmare and in Germany with Mystery Blue. By the first half of the 80s European countries had produced thrash and true metal but on the second half of the century most bands had started to include keyboards into their sound. Most Devils Records band hadnt survived this long and the musicians that had been around for a while knew that they had to produce slicker and more keyboard based hard rock, instead of pure heavy metal, to sell albums. Sarroy and Bonardo hoped that they had done the right thing when they started this new act and they started to write melodic tracks in English instead of their mother language. History now tells us that unfortunately things didnt turn out as they had hoped and even though Fine did a few gigs outside of France not many had taken notice about their brief appearance. Chris Bonardo would play with the groovy hardcore act Overlord for more than ten years and Fine members Bruno Sarrouy and vocalist J.P Demarcq would go on to power metal act Amethys. The two albums with Fine was released on cd for the first time in 2019 and both came with 3 bonus tracks

Track list:
1. Reflections
2. Tonight A Light
3. Thrill In The Air
4. Until The Night
5. Don’t Fight The Dragon
6. So Far Away
7. When Love Makes Heart Glad
8. Side By Side
9. Up And Down
10. Disciple-demo 1985
11. Dangerous Game-demo 1985
12. No Speed Limit-demo 1985