TNT – A Farewell To Arms [Japanese Edition +1] Out Of Print

After the new TNT album featured here, one of you asked for the band’s album recorded with British Tony Mills at the mic, the out of print Japanese edition of “A Farewell To Arms“.
“A Farewell To Arms” is the third album and final TNT album with Mills, and the last since the newly released XIII.

On “A Farewell To Arms” the music is more hard edged than the previous few albums, and indeed you’ll have to go all the way back to 1984’s ‘Knights Of The New Thunder’ to find the band so hard rockin’.
TNT was formed in Norway back in 1982, and the band released its eponymous debut album the following year. After some changes in the line up the classic ‘Knights Of The New Thunder’ was released in the fall of 1984, a classic for TNT.

Throughout the Eighties the band released the melodic hard rock gems “Tell No Tales” and “Intuition”, while building a fan base in Europe, America, and especially in Japan where “Intuition” became a hit.
In the early Nineties the band broke up, but TNT returned with a couple of more alternative hard rock albums later in the decade, before disappearing again.

At the turn of the millennium TNT slowly began to rise once more, and came back with full force when “My Religion” was released to rave reviews in 2004.
The band then started to fall apart, and as bass players changed at a rapid pace, singer Harnell left the band in 2006 to be replaced by Tony Mills.

Diesel Dahl and Ronni Le Tekrø remained the core of TNT, and in Victor Borge (ex Jack In The Box, Autopulver) they found a permanent bass player. When Tony Mills entered the scene TNT was finally a complete unit again, and released ‘The New Territory’ in 2007.
TNT extensively toured in Europe ever since, and at the same time been working on new music. This resulted in ‘Atlantis’, the second CD with Mills.
Both albums were very disappointing to the fans: erratic, muddy and unfun music.

But on “A Farewell To Arms” TNT re-charged batteries and composed more hard rocking classic tunes with energetic, guitar-shred filled tunes. They don’t completely abandon the eccentricity that can be TNT, but here they are much closer to the band’s trademark sound.
There’s a hard ‘n’ heavy bite on many tracks, with razor riffs and tight arrangements.
But this band finest moments are when they combine melody with Ronni’s fretboard pyrotechnics. And that’s evident on the excellent “Don’t Misunderstand Me”, with a catchy chorus, harmonies and crazy guitar work.

“Someone Else” and “Ship In The Night” both are good retro TNT-style melodic hard rockers, while “God Natt, Marie” is a very nice tune, not your typical ballad.
Some of the “heavier” tracks work fine as well, like the melting “Take It Like A Man – Woman!” or the title track.
Japanese bonus track is is “Not Only Lonely”, a melodic, effective guitar driven rocker with nice layers of harmonies and an anthemic chorus, one of the best of the bunch.

For “A Farewell To Arms” Ronni Le Tekro and the guys followed a clever premise: short tracks, direct and in-you-face. And that works for the most part in concise 40 minutes.
A quite solid return to the best TNT, specially if you’re a fan of their very earlier albums.

01 – Engine
02 – Refugee
03 – Ship In The Night
04 – Take It Like A Man – Woman!
05 – Come
06 – Barracuda
07 – A Signature On A Demon’s Self Portrait
08 – Don’t Misunderstand Me
09 – A Farewell To Arms
10 – Someone Else
11 – God Natt, Marie
12 – Not Only Lonely (Japan Bonus Track)

Tony Mills : Vocals
Ronni Le Tekro : Guitar
Morten “Diesel” Dahl : Drums
Victor Borge : Bass
Dag Stokke : Keyboards
Baard Svensen : Backing Vocals

Out Of Print:
www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/MICP-10956
.