Nearly two and a half years after their strong live UK debut at Steelhouse Festival, Elegant Weapons return with their second album, Evolution, which showcases a clear progression in both sound and songwriting. In Part One, MetalTalk discussed with Richie Faulkner about how the album prioritises melody, emotion, and overall song quality over technical showmanship.
Here, in Part Two, we dive deeper into this stunning Elegant Weapons album and find out that Richie Faulkner has exciting plans for the live sound and is full of ambition for the future. You can read Part One here.
Evolution is full of standout tracks. In Generation Me, the pace of the track rolls along really nicely, and to say Ronnie Romero’s vocal is great is a massive understatement. The song is an immediate nodder and had me smiling. Richie has the chance to throw in plenty of licks and solos. You imagine that in the studio, he has great fun sprinkling that type of magic dust on a track.
“Definitely, yeah,” Richie says. “As I said, the song comes first, and then if I can get any little licks and stuff in there, then I will. This is the second song on the record, and it’s a leveller. We got the first one out of the way, it’s right out of the gate, and it’s a fast song, and then it levels with this one. This was the first track on the record when I was writing it that really set the tone for where the album was going.
“Up until that point, I had a bit of a song here, a bit of a song there. I wasn’t quite sure where it was going. Generation Me came together quite well and quite quickly and really set the tone and made me think, Ah, this is where the album’s going. This is what it’s going to be, and everything flowed better from there. It was an important track to write for the record.”
Dave Rimmer impressively rolls along working with the riff in the style that must be a bass player’s dream to play. “He’s great,” Richie smiles. “I’ve known Davey for over 25 years. We went through the trenches in the bars, clubs and pubs around London and the UK. A quarter of a century ago, we were doing that together. We’re good friends, and it’s great to have him in the band. You know what he’s going to do, and you can trust him. He’s fantastic.”
You will read other Elegant Weapons interviews where Richie is talking about this album, allowing the band to evolve, and there may well be more to it in the future. If the prospect of live dates with Elegant Weapons floats your boat, then read on.
Elegant Weapons is a one-guitar band, and for Richie, this approach has its “pros and cons. Obviously, there’s more space to fill with one guitar. This album’s called Evolution, and maybe in the future it might be a further evolution. I’ve considered another guitar player or a guitar/keyboard player like in UFO, because there are a couple of keyboard tracks on this record.
“Adam Wakeman played keys on this record for two tracks. There are a few more tracks as well, and on the last record, we had some B3 Hammond-type stuff in there. So it might be enough to have someone who could play guitar, play Hammond and some backing vocals, to fill some space. But at the moment, it’s just me, and I like having the freedom. But I have considered adding another person in the future, so we’ll see what happens.”
Holy Roller has a Robin Trower feel, especially in the first part, and especially in the way Ronnie sings. But I love the way the track progresses, especially leading into Richie’s guitar solo. When you realise that that song is about the Jonestown massacre, you really get that sense of doom in his guitar solo. It comes across as quite goosebumpy.
“It’s a tragic story to anyone who doesn’t know what it is,” Richie says, “but it’s one of those things, isn’t it? It’s telling a bit of history and how people can be tempted by things that are out of this world, and they go along with it. But yeah, it’s got a bit of a Sabbath feel.
“Someone else actually described it as Trower, a bit of Hendrix in there, and that’s the DNA of the band, really. Ronnie is just the icing on the cake. It gets quicker as the song progresses and then races off at the end. I really love that song.”
Thrown To The Wolves is hard blues. The riff with the doubled bass in parts is great and here Richie had fun with his great friend Jared James Nichols dropping a solo. “He did about three takes, and it was done,” Richie says. “I did mine in about 1,000 takes. He laid it down, and it’s got all the heart and the passion and the fire that Jarrod James Nichols’ playing has. He did great, and I’m really grateful that he could come and do that.”
Rupture has the synth out again. This is one of those awesome instrumental deep dive album tracks that maybe gets lost in the streaming world, which is a real shame, especially when it runs into Mercy Of The Fallen.
“A couple of years ago, Adam Jones from Tool got in touch and asked me if I wanted to play a song with them at Bridgestone Arena out here in Nashville,” Richie says. “I said, yeah, that’d be great. I put the phone down, and I automatically thought, what have I done? What have I signed up for? Playing Tool songs is no easy feat.
“So I learned the song, and I sat there for about two weeks practising this song and learning all the parts, and did it, and it was great. But I think that all went in, and I came up with this guitar part that was kind of Tool-esque. I couldn’t think of any lyrics or melody to go with it, but I could hear a heartbeat through it. I could hear a pulsing heart.
“Sometimes when you write music, you get a movie in your head. You can see a scene that the music is painting a picture of, and I could see something that referred to my own experience. It’s like someone in a hospital bed with machines around them, plugged into tubes and life support machines. I could hear, and I could feel turmoil and concern and anguish, but I could also hear hope as well.
“So that’s what it was. The heartbeat going through there was someone’s survival. At the end, on the album, it flatlines, so the person flatlines. Luckily, I didn’t, and I’m talking to you today. But it crashes in with Mercy Of The Fallen after, so it creates a cool dynamic.
“Mercy Of The Fallen contains a reprise of that, so they’re related in some ways, so that’s a cool thing to get on an album as well.”
I love the way Ronnie sings “Redemption, see the light divine” in Mercy Of The Fallen. This brings so much emotion, and when played loud, you can really feel this strongly.
“Again, man, you can’t say enough about Ronnie,” Richie says. “Everything he does, and again when we were producing him, Andy would be right on top of that. He’d be saying, ‘Do that again. Make sure that this line or that line gets pronounced well. Emphasis on this word or that word.’
“He made sure that all those things popped out when they needed to. Kudos to Andy as well. He’s a major part of the team. Made sure that all those things came out when they needed to.”
Elegant Weapons finish Evolution on Keeper Of The Keys. This is a beautiful song with a proper ending to cap a beautiful album. For me, Evolution is a triumph of songwriting and a real throwback to when albums were albums and were meant to be listened to all the way through. Keeper Of The Keys has that really classic ending as well.
“I really appreciate you saying that,” Richie says. “It’s what we try to do. You put an album together as an album. I don’t know if people do that anymore. Obviously, people of a certain age and above do. But it’s almost becoming a lost art.
“People listen to tracks or a couple of tracks alone. But that’s what we try to do and Keeper Of The Keys is exactly that. I couldn’t find any other place to put it on the record.
“It starts with Ronnie, the keyboard and the guitar, and it’s almost like a Deep Purple type intro. It didn’t need anything else. It just needed bare bones. It goes from there, and it thunders along at the end. It almost sounds like a live jam at the end, because of the keyboard and everything.
“When it finishes, the Hammond’s bubbling over, the rotary speaker’s going and it ends like that.
“I wanted it towards the front of the album just to showcase what the band’s doing now, but I couldn’t think of anything to put after it. So it had to go at the end, and it finishes it off nicely as you said. So I appreciate you saying that.”
The hope that we might see Elegant Weapons later in the year is a mouthwatering prospect. “I was on a call with Ronnie a couple of days ago,” Richie says, “and it’s getting everyone together. Ronnie’s doing his thing at the moment. Dave is out with Uriah Heep over the summer. Christopher’s out with Accept.
“It’s getting everyone together and planning it in enough time so that everyone’s free at the same time. We’re looking at a little bit later in the year, when Priest is off tour, and everyone’s off tour.
“We can get something together, maybe do something in the States as well. We would like to get over to Japan and places like that as well. Wherever we can really. Wherever we can take this and, as I said before, play live and connect with as many fans as we can.”
If Elegant Weapons hit London at the right time, are there plans to bring Ronnie along to Metalworks?
“That would be great, wouldn’t it? Fantastic. One of those things, whenever I’m in town, I always try to get down there, because that’s what it’s all about, really. Getting in front of people, playing great songs, and that’s where we all come from. So hopefully, yes, that’ll be great.”
Elegant Weapons release Evolution digitally and on CD on 24 April 2026 via Exciter Records, with a special edition vinyl pressing to follow later in the year. You can pre-save and pre-order Evolution from https://exciter-records.ffm.to/elegantweapons-evolution.
