“Fight for Life” is my latest song. It’s a song about reflection. It’s a song about fighting for your dreams. It’s a song about fighting for what’s rightfully yours: your life. With an alternative and rock vibe, you stream it here: https://band.link/fightforlife

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Fight For Life

My new song "Incomplete" is out today and it's somewhat autobiographical 🙏  Listen here: https://bnd.lc/incomplete

We humans are not perfect and we will never be! We can not be the perfect son, daughter, friend, partner, engineer, doctor, guitarist, singer, painter, or whatever else. We will ALWAYS make mistakes. We will not be able to please everyone. We cannot have a perfect record. And there will always be someone who is better than us. This is a fact. It is hard to accept it but we have to, and the faster we accept it, the easier it gets.

I have a tendency to want things to be perfect to the point of “OCDing” about it. I want to be the perfect guitarist, the perfect songwriter, and the perfect singer. I want to be the best at my work. I want to be the best looking. I want to be the best at, well… everything! And what’s worse is that I have such a tendency to obsess about it that I stop enjoying the process and just keep on “fighting with myself “ hoping to attain that unreachable goal: perfection. At times, I would feel like the process of doing anything was an uphill battle and whenever anything was done, I didn’t have that sense of accomplishment or wholeness that you get when you finish something. Everything felt like a chore. Everything felt pointless and unworthy.

But then I started thinking about all the great work and the great people that passed in history and the legends that we read about or watch documentaries about, living or dead, and about their process of creating their masterpieces. And then I realized something: Most of them didn’t know what the hell they were doing and most of them didn’t realize that at the moment of coming up with their masterpieces, they will be creating something that will influence generations and literally change the world. They were just simply doing what they do, to the best of their abilities, and being there in the moment and living in the moment. 

This is what "Incomplete" is about. Like the song if you can relate to that feeling.

I mentioned earlier that this song is somewhat about me. Sometimes I still feel anxious about not being perfect and sometimes I still tend to obsess about things. However when this foreboding feeling takes over me,  I take a deep breath and take a step back; and I remind myself that while we should always work hard and, as basketball coaches say, “Always give 100%”. And it’s ok to not be perfect. It’s ok to make mistakes. Enjoy the process and the moment. It’s ok to be Incomplete.

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Incomplete

My new EP Where Time Stood Still is out now 🤘⏱ ! Listen here: https://band.link/wheretimestoodstill

The idea of this album and how it came to be is pretty different from the way I wrote and  recorded my previous musical works. I was inspired by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis and how they recorded their album Carnage. I recall reading an interview with Warren and he described the process of recording this album. In short, Nick and Warren met after the Covid restrictions started to lift, and recorded an album that was basically improvised on the spot. They booked a studio for a certain amount of time, composed and recorded an album right then and there. AND it sounds brilliant! So beautiful and organic. So I decided to do the same.

As an artist, I like to challenge myself. I like to push the boundaries a little bit. Trying new sounds, experimenting with different styles, using different methods of recording techniques… Yet, normally I like to have a song somewhat ready before going into the studio. I normally prepare a full demo or I would go in the studio with the main melodies and guitar riffs ready and we develop and arrange the songs there. This time It was the total opposite. I called Hadi (@hadiplaysmusic), my producer, and I told him the Carnage story and I said I’m just going to come in with some lyrics and we will develop the songs there from scratch. That’s it, we record one full song in one day. No riffs, no predetermined ideas. We will vibe with the songs’ lyrics and start bouncing ideas. Just be there in the moment, oblivious to the world outside us; Where Time Stood Still.

The album is composed of 5 songs and an intro. The subject matter is dark; and how could it not be with all that’s going on in the world around us. The themes I cover are war, the Beirut explosion of 2020, and more. As an artist, I’m inspired to write about matters that affect me personally or about matters that are taking place in the world around me. The lyrics were written in different time spans. Some are a bit old and some were very recently written, and all tied together with fantastic guitar riffs and intense singing. Let me know what you think and thanks for listening and reading 🙏

Never Leave Me

The Age Of Mediocracy

To Tame A Man

Where Time Stood Still

The acoustic version of "The Land of Cedars" is out now on Anghami and other music platforms: https://bnd.lc/TheLandOfCedars

"The Land of Cedars" chronicles the life of any Lebanese person not born with a silver spoon in his/her/their mouth.

It is about any Lebanese person who wants to live a honest life: go to school, get an education, build a circle of friends, work, make some money, start a family, live a normal comfortable life in peace, dream a little, smile, grow old and die peacefully.

These are not ambitious goals. These are not impossible dreams. These are very down-to-earth and regular aspirations for any person who breathes in this world. This is the basic right to life.

Sadly, for Lebanese people, these are unattainable goals. The right to live is so out of reach that they would rather risk their lives and the lives of their children to be smuggled out of this hell hole and, in the end, die at sea (read more about the boat that sank on the shores of Tripoli in April 2022).

You can read a full background on this song on my blog at https://www.greyfadeband.com

The Land Of Cedars (Acoustic)

❓ Out now - my new single "Unanswered." 

You can listen to the song via Anghami and other streaming platforms here: https://bnd.lc/GreyfadeUnanswered

Life is an unanswered question. We walk through the path of life seeking answers to many questions—mundane ones, important ones, life-altering ones, philosophical ones, and unanswerable ones. This song is about that last bit.

The meaning of this song changes depending on who’s listening. We all have unanswered questions, but your unanswered questions are different from mine, and those are different from everyone else’s.

This song is basically about me walking on my path of life, trying to find my own answers and “the light at the end of the tunnel,” through obstacles and darkness. It's filled with many oxymorons—washing our sins with dirty water; breathing murky air; seeing the light in the scary dark…

Will you and I ever find these answers? Should we even find them? They say the beauty of life lies in its ambiguity. Once the answers to our very specific and very unique fundamental questions are found, life becomes boring and aimless, and thus ceases to be life.

I think these questions are better left “unanswered.”

Unanswered

"Born Denied"—my new song, out now. Listen at https://bnd.lc/BornDenied

Is there a black cloud always hovering over you? Do you constantly get the short end of the stick? Do you feel some people are just naturally lucky, and you were simply born on the wrong side?

This is a song about all that, with hints of melancholy and darkness.

No matter where you’re from or who you are; whether you’re born of royalty, aristocracy, or poor, we were all born naked, and to dust we will return: “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.”

“Everyone deserves the right to live.” Or so they say.

I won’t be able to list all the human rights violations that happen on a daily basis, but the few of us with a conscience need to do more. To each in their own capacity.

I phrased it as “the few of us” because yes, we are few. Forget about the slogans, the fake empathic faces, and the empty words you hear from politicians and celebrities. These people of influence need to do way more than what they’re currently doing, because they have reach. Their voices can be heard by millions. A couple social media posts and a few fake tears just won’t cut it.

This song is about the ostracized and the neglected; the so-called poor and the ugly that the aforementioned influencers feel disgusted associating with. This song is about all who are Born Denied.

We all deserve the right to live. Just how cruel of a race are we?

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Born Denied

My new single “Acid Reign” is out today. Listen at https://bnd.lc/AcidReign

This was one of the first songs I’d ever written (and the first I was probably really proud of). I remember collaborating on this in the late '90s with @‌mounir.baalbaki, the bass player of my old band.

I remember when I first came up with the intro, I couldn’t stop playing it—the oriental vibe was so catchy to my ears. I remember showing it to Mounir, and we just started bouncing ideas off each other. We eventually ended up writing the song.

Afterwards, we demoed the song on my old four track. I remember making CD copies and distributing it to everyone. We even submitted the song as a demo to a record label, hoping to get signed and become famous. Ahh, the dreams of adolescents—so beautiful, so pure, and so strong they can move mountains.

Lyrically, the song is about despotic tyrants who unleash terror, lies, and fear on their subjects. The song has a very apocalyptic vibe—images of war, burning skies, corpses lying everywhere, and children crying while covered in blood.

I’ll be honest with you—the theme of the song doesn’t really cover new terrain. Almost every metal band in the world has written songs about tyrants, war, and the end of the world. It has been done many times before. However, what saddens me reading the lyrics 25 years later is that it’s still very relevant today. It’s as if the lyrics were written about any insert-name-of-tyrant living today.

On a more personal level, this song has a very dear and sentimental value to me. It feels surreal I was finally able to record it now, release it, and finally listen to it properly without the scratches of the demo tape. I must say, though, that I still hear those scratches even with the new version of the song. To my ears, they are forever etched in.

After I told producer @‌hadiplaysmusic about the story and history of the song, he suggested adding a reversed-type recording of the original demo at the end, as a nod to the past. This is the scratchy outro bit towards the end. So, in a way, you can still hear the playing of the 16-year-old Fadi and Mounir on this final version. The song has come full circle, past and present intertwined.

And, by the way, Mounir is still one of my closest and dearest friends to this day. Cheers bro—this one’s for you too!

Acid Reign

The new Greyfade single, “The Barriers of the Soul,” is out today. Listen at https://bnd.lc/barriers 🚧

𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘺𝘴 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨. What an eerily true statement. All things, living or not, will eventually be destroyed by time. Living things will die. Color will fade. Mountains will erode. Continents will drift apart and sink. It might take days, years, millennia, or eons, but eventually everything will wither away and be destroyed by the immortal Father Time.

Relationships and friendships are not immune to the obliterating powers of time. This is a very real topic many people can relate to. Divorced couples. Estranged families. Best friends that don’t speak to each other. More often than not, you will hear the same reason for what happened to their relationship, and it goes something like: “I don’t know what happened, but we slowly drifted apart.”

As mortals, we will perish away one day. Sure, something might be invented in the future to prolong our lives but, in the end, time will prevail. So, let us use our limited time here to build relationships; not barriers.

I think one solution to avoid relationships going south, becoming a worthy opponent to time, is to simply keep talking. As the Pink Floyd song goes: “All we need to do is keep talking.”

When we stop sharing thoughts, ideas, and problems, the other party will assume everything is okay, and people will drift apart without even noticing. Slowly, “The Barriers of the Soul” will be built.

Barriers Of The Soul

When The Law Betrays

A cover song for the peaky blinders theme song by Greyfade. Appearing on the next album to be released very soon!

Greyfade - Red Right Hand

This is the second Ep from the band Greyfade released on Dec,1 2017. This is a darker, heavier and more complex chapter from the one-man band Greyfade.

All songs written by Fadi helou except Red Right Hand by Nick cave/Mick Harvey/Thomas Wydler and Hopeless... Aimless... Soulless by Fadi Helou/Hadi Sarriedine.

Rhythm/Lead/Acoustic Guitars/ Lead and backing vocals: Fadi Helou
Bass/Drum programming/Orchestration/Production: Hadi Sarriedine
Artwork: Saad Ghalayini

Hopeless... Aimless... Soulless

A soft single about giving up from the one man band Greyfade. the single is mainly piano driven with guitars and vocals. The is a new side to Greyfade

Easier

An acoustic performance of Somewhere the single fro the album Life which came out 2 years ago

Greyfade - Somewhere (Acoustic)

A heavy catch song that deals with the concept go man losing his soul for technology.

Greyfade - Prototype Human

Stream "Tears of the Mighty" at https://bnd.lc/totm

This song represents a lot of the values I wanted to express through music and why I created Greyfade as a medium for that. My good friend and collaborator Mounir shared a few thoughts on the meaning of this song:

By nature, we are judgmental, and it is imperative that the judgements we make on any matter, come as a rationalization of the way we perceive reality. While trying to make sense of the world, we tell ourselves stories. We weave a narrative that shapes our experience, and this narrative develops over time, and changes as we age.

As adults, we are more mature and balanced in these judgements. More nuanced, you’d say. But as children, we tend to find our bearings by calibrating our distance from extremes: Order vs. chaos, clean vs dirty, happy vs. sad, good vs bad.

Growing up in the war-torn paradise that was Lebanon, the simple stories we were told by our folks about the war, shaped my perception of the army as good, and the politicians as bad. Balanced nationalism and a will to serve one’s land and people is surely something admirable. Words like honor, sacrifice, loyalty and valor immediately come to mind.

As I grew older, I realized that the political and military institutions are intrinsically linked, and to my dismay, I learnt that in most cases, the army is being used as disposable pawns (hint hint, Metallica’s Disposable Heroes) in the politicians’ blood stained chess board.

If there is one image that summarizes my dismay is this image of a crying soldier: This soldier has no option but to obey orders, and quash a popular uprising against a political elite that has taken my country hostage.

This soldier, save for his uniform, belongs with the protestors, not against them. This soldier probably suffers more than 80% of those in the streets protesting. How then, can we be surprised when this internal turmoil leaks out as a single tear leaving his bloodshot eyes?

When talking colors, grey is the midpoint between black and white, but it is neither. It can turn out great, yet it may go tits up. Looking at the events in Lebanon, and in many places around the world, I can only hope that the greyness we live in daily starts making its way into the light. And that flicker of hope is what "Tears of the Mighty" means to me.

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Greyfade - Tears Of The Mighty

There is a lot that’s happening around the world. Some countries are dealing with it better than others, but several others have been betrayed by their “leaders” and it’s the people that have been sadly facing the consequences. My new song “In The Name of Honor” is about that betrayal by so-called leaders, it was inspired by by the citizens of my home country, Lebanon, waking up to storm the streets against the corrupt regime last year ✊☮️ https://band.link/itnoh

In The Name Of Honor

Listen to Greyfade’s “Fragile Being” here: https://bnd.lc/fragilebeing

Humans are social beings, not some noble gas, inert, stagnant, and unreactive. We are shaped by what and who we interact with. We thrive on connection and communication. In the best of days, one could have argued that we are not meant to be city dwellers, shacked up in concrete boxes with practically no connection to the earth, to the sea, to the stars and heavens above.

We are a product of our surroundings of the people we spend the most time with. And now, with both our social connection and natural connectedness at stake, we find ourselves lost in our own minds… For the luckier amongst us, upon whom these stars have shone, we still have jobs, passions, and relationships we can nurture in isolation. But for many, near and far, this is not the case. 

Whichever way you look at it, everyone is feeling loss and grief; and worse still, we are largely all alone in facing this grief and dealing with it, with lots of worries weighing heavily on our mind. And you know what they say about an idle mind: it’s the devil’s workshop.  

The haves and the have-nots are losing things they took for granted. On one end of the spectrum, there’s the man who has it all but can’t enjoy it, and on the other end, the man who has so little, and still struggles to even maintain that. 

The seemingly apologetic nature of the lyrics in Greyfade’s latest song ring oddly true to me as a keen observer of human nature. One thing I found fascinating towards the beginning of this crisis, before identity politics started playing a larger role as is often the case, is that the most devout, and the most liberal amongst us have morphed into one heaping apologetic mass, bound by its remorsefulness, yet divided by way of whom they offer their penance to. 

Whereas one might pray contritely to God, and sing mournful odes apologizing to Mother Nature, one would be hard pressed to argue that what they feel is one and the same. A realization of wanton hubris on mankind’s part. This is a profound realization. Although the stories we tell ourselves might differ wildly from each other, the way we experience them might be shockingly similar. 

Granted, looking at the world through the lenses of ‘believer’ and ‘non-believer’ is just one over-simplistic way to segment the world. Regardless where you are on that spectrum, you can’t but marvel at the dissonance between man’s hubris, and his fragility.

Calamities like this can be seen as massive equalizers. They unite us in our grief and our loss, in our hopes, and in our optimism and belief in a better tomorrow, should it come. 

Until now, one thing remains abundantly clear to me; mankind will never run out of subtle, and not so subtle reminders of said fragility. In terms of reminders, COVID-19 is not a very subtle one; as a direct health threat, the economic fallout, or the paradigm shift it will bring to our social lives and in turn, the potentially disastrous impact on our mental health. 

Man is a social being, ergo, he is a fragile one.

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Fragile Being

Listen to Greyfade’s “6:07” here: https://band.link/greyfade607

“6:07” is my latest release and it’s a song I wish I didn’t have to write as it sadly is about the explosion that rocked Lebanon in the Port of Beirut on August 4th, 2020. The song is to honour the souls that passed away, and to express a heavy grief for the catastrophe that shook my struggling country to its core 🇱🇧

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6:07

No two people are born exactly alike and no two minds think alike. That is the beauty of us, the complicated creature called human being. This is what my latest song “Disciples of Death” is about.
 
Being Diverse, Being Unique and Being Free are what define us as human beings and they are what shaped our world all through history. From the early Sumerian civilization, to the indigenous Amazonian cultures to the people in the skyscrapers of New York and Dubai; Man, by being diverse, unique and free molded and shaped this round ball of land, water and air that we live on and made it what it is today.

Being Unique defines us. Being Diverse helps us grow and move forward. Being Free is our sacred right. But understanding right from wrong and being respectful to one another makes us Human.

Stream "Disciples of Death" here: https://band.link/disciplesofdeath

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Disciples Of Death

Greyfade is a one-man alternative metal band based in Dubai, UAE, that crosses the genre with musical eclecticism through experimental sounds.


Born in Lebanon, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Fadi Helou began playing music at the age of 15 and songwriting by the age of 17. He founded his first band “The Prophecy” and subsequently moved to the United Arab Emirates where he started his latest music project Greyfade based on the influences of such iconic bands as Metallica, Megadeth, and Iron Maiden.


Greyfade released its debut album Life in August 2016. Distributed worldwide digitally and available physically in Virgin Megastores across the Middle East, Life is a 10-song album that blends a traditional metal sound with a layered vibe that transposes the expressionism behind the contradictory emotions of human experience. From anger to serenity, to beauty and rage, Greyfade’s music, showcasing the emotional spectrum and the dualities of life, is both a study and an expression of life lived. 


Greyfade is currently working on new music.

Greyfade

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