Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Bonfire
Label: UDR
Release: 2017
Runtime: 63:33
Rating: 4/5
Hans Ziller, the famed German guitarist and sole original member of the current lineup of legendary German hard rockers Bonfire from Ingolstadt in Bavaria, isn’t letting up. After getting the band back up and running two years ago, when the first thing out was the superb comeback album »Glorious«, followed by a double compilation of re-recorded classics called »Pearls« – both featuring former Accept screamer David Reece on vocals – flinty Ziller and his Bonfire are back on the scene with yet another brand-new full-length studio effort.
To pull that off, Hans Ziller had to freshen up the lineup again. Today’s Bonfire features seasoned musicians, even though they’ve been with Ziller only since 2015. The latest addition, new singer Alexx Stahl, only joined the band last year, after Ziller’s fleeting stint with Michael Bormann (ex-Jaded Heart), which lasted a mere two months in Bonfire.
Well, Stahl is cut from a different cloth. The guy is well known in the German metal underground. He plays in the excellent Roxxcallibur, who cover tunes from the NWOBHM days, left his mark on two superb studio releases by classic metal revivalists Viron, who sadly split up, and on top of that he very successfully impersonates Ronnie James Dio in Beyond the Rainbow, a Rainbow tribute band. In short, Ziller couldn’t have skipped Stahl in his search for a new singer, and luckily the new guy proved to be an outstanding catch, not just for his incredible vocal charisma, punch and explosive character, but also on the personality side, clicking instantly with the rest of the refreshed Bonfire.
That the clouds have fully cleared and the crew is buzzing with great creative energy is easy to tell right from the first bars of the new album, when opener Power Train thunders in, followed by the no less ravenous Stand Up 4 Rock, and Praying 4 A Miracle carries on the album’s melodically invasive punch. All three tracks show excellent songwriting chemistry between verses and choruses, where instantly catchy hooks take over, like in Bonfire’s best days, the classic »Point Blank« era included. The inspiration doesn’t let up from there, and the band skillfully keeps up a mix of ultra-melodic catchiness and straight-ahead rock punch, though you have to keep in mind that the production is of course modern, and that Bonfire write new songs a little differently today. The title track, for instance, goes somewhere you could just as well imagine Helloween and/or Unisonic ending up. In short: »Byte the Bullet« is a bona fide classic German hard rock album from head to toe. It doesn’t get more German than this.
It’s also interesting that Ziller found no small amount of nerve to include a cover of the Jethro Tull classic Locomotive Breath, since at first association it doesn’t belong on a Bonfire album at all, and certainly not in the middle of it. If anywhere, at the tail end. But here too Ziller found an effective remedy, slowing the basic rhythm down a bit, and the main riff, now carried by the guitar, works really well in Bonfire’s new outfit. You do have to grit your teeth through a draining first minute of intro, though. You’ve probably figured out yourself that it’s more or less the only unnecessary track on the new album.
The band doesn’t skimp on its fun side either. The instrumental medley InstruMetal keeps the mood up, with Ziller strolling through the most striking melodies of classics from Beethoven and Mussorgsky to Strauss and Grieg, and so does the opening romp Friedensreich, where the band members poke fun at the broken German of their English-speaking bassist Ronnie Parkes, the only non-German member of today’s Bonfire. By now you’ve figured out for yourself that these two cuts are totally superfluous on the new album, too.
Not to ramble. Ah, right. At the tail end of the album you’ll get yet another (new) version of the Bonfire classic Sweet Obsession. Otherwise, all in all: surely the strongest release since the eighties. No beating around the bush. The most clearly defined, musically and compositionally polished. Stahl is simply the key to this success. As a vocalist he’s flat-out stunning. That’s why he more than deserves a prominent spot in a bigger band. A band with a higher profile.
The choruses compete over who steals the spotlight on the album, and once again we can revel without limit in the outstanding criss-crossing solo slalom of Ziller and his buddy Frank Pane’ and the incredibly effective mid-eights, where the band forcefully and skillfully adds ornaments of guitar harmonies in wailing thirds.
The album »Byte the Bullet« is thus the right one for the new era of Bonfire. Despite largely solid, if not superb, studio predecessors, Ziller has finally, with this new formula of lineup refreshment, achieved what he’d been after for a long time. First and foremost stability and the right chemistry in the band, sailing into a new sphere of exceptional creative inspiration even in the band’s mature years. With albums like »Byte the Bullet«, Bonfire won’t be getting old anytime soon.
Sweet obsession clearly just keeps going and going!
Bonfire – Praying 4 a Miracle (official video):
Lineup
Alexx Stahl – vocals
Hans Ziller – guitar, backing vocals
Frank Pane’ – guitar, backing vocals
Ronnie Parkes – bass, backing vocals
Tim Breideband – drums
Production
Hans Ziller
Tracklist
- Power Train
- Stand Up 4 Rock
- Praying for a Miracle
- Some Kinds Evil
- Lonely Nights
- Byte the Bullet
- Locomotive Breath
- Reach for the Sky
- Sweet Surrender
- Friedensreich
- Instrumental
- Too Far From Heaven
- Without You
- Sweet Obsession
