Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Gotthard
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release: 2012
Running time: 53:03
Rating: 4.7/5
Did anyone doubt it? Gotthard without Steve Lee. The doubts were totally justified. Mission impossible. And yet, with the band’s future hanging in the balance, Gotthard walked into the game with all the guts in the world, like a wounded lion with nothing left to lose and nothing but self-preservation on its mind. And? They came out on top. Of course, it’s hard to talk about universal joy. Steve Lee is simply no longer with us, and that’s a loss whose gap will never be filled. Somewhere up there he’s watching over them, always, whenever he thinks of Gotthard. the artist’s unwithered, unsung heart.
Enough mourning! From now on even Steve Lee can breathe easy, wherever his soul may be sailing. A new face has stepped in as lead vocalist. Considering how irreplaceable the one-of-a-kind Steve Lee seemed in Gotthard, who from around 2003 right up to the end of 2010 earned a high international reputation and universal recognition for their contribution to rock music, the guys put their heads together in the months after Steve’s tragic accident and thought long and hard about what next. In the auditions for a new vocalist they set out looking for an unknown, and above all »unspoiled« name. They looked right in their own backyard, the Alpine Swiss woods. Let’s be honest: Gotthard could have claimed every right to go shopping among internationally renowned singers. Modesty is a fine virtue, and this time that very modesty paid off big for Gotthard. They found the right comrade for their crew.
First things first: Nic Maeder is an unbelievably good vocal match for Steve Lee. So good that the new songs work with such conviction that you can spin any of them on »Firebirth« and know right away it can only be Gotthard and nobody else. The basic condition for keeping the credibility built on the back catalog of studio releases and stage presence is thus fulfilled. With an excellent new album, Gotthard have saved their skins for the long haul, and with the rebirth of the phoenix, embodied first and foremost by the quality of the ideas realized on the new album, as well as by the latest chain of events from the unfortunate date of 05.10.2010 to today, the cover art and the album title itself announce that the future is bright again for them, and ready for new, high-flying artistic challenges. The Gotthard story, then, has not come to an end. Quite the opposite. The reborn band has already stepped into a new circle of life.
The first track, Starlight, tells you everything about how »Firebirth« keeps up the level of its predecessor »Need To Believe« (2009). A classic hard rocker, subtly built up from the verse through the pre-chorus and onward into a fiery, harmonized chorus melody with a pompous outline. Production-wise vividly contrasted, filigree-detailed in its pursuit of harmony between the individual elements of the sound, with a catchy, erogenous rhythmic swagger at a mid-tempo, over which an open riff rolls, crossed with a passing »Southern« ornament. A song that grabs you instantly. A song that makes it instantly clear it would have been tailor-made for Steve Lee, and a song where Maeder instantly throws up the horns at the doubters, showing with his vocal approach that he’s the real deal and found himself in exactly the right place. Just as good are the »cowboy« track with the outrageously goofy title Yippie Aye Yay, which, given its excellent arrangement, could easily have swapped places with Starlight as the album opener, and, in the second half of the album, the raunchy Right On, where Leo Leoni once again pulls out another recognizable trick from his well-worn guitar bag, the gravelly »talk box« effect, which brings that unmistakable cheeky Gotthard stamp.
If the opener had a bit of tickling mischief, Give Me Real, placed right after Starlight, is a dark, dramatic pulse-racer that knows no joking around, and above all one of the main architects of the album’s highly vibrant mood in the dynamic unfolding of events, since it delivers an outstanding burst of contagious melodic payoff, thoroughly greased with harmonized vocal lines and a melancholic feel. Quite a few songs on this album work in a similar way to Give Me Real. Already the third one, Remember It’s Me, released as a single, which develops its verse vocal lines similarly to the title track of »Need To Believe«, and then, in the rest of the album, Shine, The Story’s Over, S.O.S., or the especially bombastic I Can, laced with triplets of guitar harmonies (which is more of a rarity than a rule for Gotthard) and propelled by a uniquely rolling, thumping rhythm. The songs described in this part of the review make »Firebirth« feel like the most serious, or mature, Gotthard album, or a Gotthard album where the sense of drama in the moment, let’s say a shade of trapped darkness in the string of moods, is more intensely emphasized than ever before in the band’s career.
From this we can conclude that Gotthard haven’t lost a single bit of their outstanding feel for arrangements, and especially for bringing a catchy guitar riff and dressing it in the trademark-recognizable symbiosis of a biting rhythm section and a centrally positioned, authoritative vocal that uses its highly expressive flexibility and developed power to fill all the available space for the ultimate upgrade, optimizing the melodic reach of the songs, while all of this is held together by an atmospheric blanket of subtly added keyboard arrangements.
Leo Leoni gathered a whole universe of usable guitar phrases and picked the best of what he had for the album »Firebirth«. He was aware all along that the public would receive the first Gotthard album without Steve Lee quite critically. And he masterfully shut their mouths. Thirteen tracks of exuberant ultra bombast in the true Gotthard fashion, with a wide range of expression and variety, 13 tracks of the original Gotthard legacy, in other words. You can’t ask for more.
Nic Maeder is, as mentioned, almost a perfect replacement for Steve Lee. The differences between the two singers in vocal expression and timbre are especially blurred on the up-tempo and mid-tempo songs. The occasional illusion that Steve Lee is on the album is boosted above all by the subtly constructed harmonic chorus melodies and the dose of grit that Maeder adds to his vocal delivery as he wants and needs. The differences in vocal shading between the two singers are noticeable especially at the points where sophistication is needed and where sensitive sensuality has to take center stage. And Nic Maeder is extremely successful at this. He has also completely eliminated any »Arafat-style English« from his delivery and takes the verses with the same »American«-sounding accent as Steve Lee did. The ballad Tell Me is one such example, where Maeder is in no way behind Steve Lee. Following the model of the most recognizable, typical Gotthard ballads like Heaven, besides Tell Me there’s also the phenomenal closing ballad-like Where You Are, which is dedicated to none other than Steve Lee. Nic Maeder is exceptionally flexible in vocal expression. At moments he can explode fully, when he injects a strong, melodically aimed vocal with that characteristic note of grit of the late Steve Lee. That means Maeder also belongs in the ranks of singers like Steven Tyler (Aerosmith) and Jon Bon Jovi (Bon Jovi). Maeder shows all his teeth of exceptional vocal qualities especially at the dramatic peak of the album, the song The Story’s Over.
»Firebirth« is an album of top-notch hard rock qualities, masterfully dressed in a harmony of all the tricks that modern recording studios have to offer. With Gotthard you don’t even need Einstein to unravel the secrets. This band is so good that for the studio original of a song they can use solos played in the first take. There’s no need to even mention that the production captured an authentic liveliness that conjures up the feeling that the band is playing its own private gig right there in the studio. »Firebirth« won’t let you breathe. Not for a second, and you’ll have to pick your favorites on it yourself, since all the songs are polished down to the last detail. Polished in reaching the ideal balance between ultra-high-voltage rock punch and defining catchy lead melodies.
With this album Gotthard haven’t merely held their ground on the scene after the unfortunate shipwreck and the loss of Steve Lee, they’ve sailed into a new resurrection and a new life with the wind full in their sails. »Firebirth« is an excellent album that, besides all the band’s traditional trademarks, also offers a distinctive mood, with a measure of the drama of the moment, which brings out its expressive darkness more than any Gotthard album before it. An album of 13 fully optimized hard rock marches that, upon release, already counts among the very top favorites for hard rock album of this year, and judging by the stamp he left with his first vocal contribution to Gotthard, Nic Maeder is well on his way to becoming the second Steve Lee.
Lineup
Nic Maeder – vocals
Leo Leoni – guitar
Freddy Scherer – guitar
Marc Lynn – bass
Hena Habegger – drums, percussion
Production
Paul Lani & Leo Leoni
Tracklist
01 Starlight
02 Give Me Real
03 Remember It’s Me
04 Fight
05 Yippie Aye Yay
06 Tell Me
07 Shine
08 The Story’s Over
09 Right On
10 S.O.S
11 Take It All Back
12 I Can
13 Where Are You
14. Starlight*
*… bonus track (acoustic version)
