Artist: Bonfire
Label: LZ Records
Release: 2008
Rating: 1.5/5
After “Double X” (2006), a seriously lovely comeback album compared to “Free” (2003), the guys decided it was time for something completely new. What pulled them in was the theater in their “native” Ingolstadt, which asked whether they were up for some action and for Bonfire to set the first European melodrama, “Die Räuber”, to music. Written by Friedrich Schiller, it tells the story of two brothers, Karl and Frantz. Karl is a free spirit, a kind of German Robin Hood, and good-looking to boot, while his brother is the complete opposite, which stems from how they were raised: their father Maximillian played favorites from the very start when it came to fatherly love. Frantz is therefore a cold, rational character with bottled-up emotions, interested only in power and money. “The Räuber” is a critique of German society at the time.
What do you make of that? A hard rock band with a concept album. Weird, right? Still, they have every legitimate right, even if they were to set a new ad for Ciciban slippers to music. In fact, it’s harder for a hard rock band to bring the mood of a story to life through music. Of course, it depends on the story and the band’s “intellect,” but progressive rock and progressive metal bands definitely have the edge here. Bonfire thought so too at first and yelled out in unison: “We hate theater!” But then they ended up identifying with the concept and set it to music across 14 tracks! The identification was even so strong that two of them are written in German. Add the opening instrumental The Räuber and the fourth track, The Oath, and that leaves you with far fewer than the standard 10 real songs to analyze.
Well, a story has to hang together as a whole. Apparently, whatever wouldn’t work the nice way on this material got forced together. It’s incredible how ill-suited German is for rock music! Both Blut Und Todt and Lass Die Toten Schlafen are awkward for Claus Lessmann’s vocals. His impoverished voice, which today has been reduced strictly to a worn-out gargling through the nose, if I may be slightly rude, leaves him even less room to maneuver in the hunt for the melody a hard rock vocal has to deliver. The hard “R”? Horror movie. On top of that, the choruses of both German tracks add backing vocals, and you get the feeling you’re stuck with a gang of crazed hobbits stuffing their faces in some German beer hall, jamming their mouths with beer sausages…
The album is unintentionally split into two quality halves. In the first, Bonfire are still, rightfully, those proper sturdy hard rock warriors, and with the assault tracks Bells Of Freedom and Refugee Of Fate, the album fully lives up to their quality standards. Love Don’t Lie is a nice ballad, followed by another of the album’s bright spots, Black Night, where the guys build a bombastic atmosphere. The trouble starts in the second half, from Hip Hip Horray through Father’s Return. While Hip Hip Horray is built in a way that’s only a pinch away from The Dubliners, the atmosphere completely deflates through the mediocre ballads Do You Still Love Me and Let Me Be Your Water. Luckily, The Good Die Young brings hope back to the album. A proper Bonfire rocker, classically built and born for crowds going nuts at gigs. A cowbell, a mid-tempo groove, avalanches of polished riffing flirting over the top, and a grabby chorus. Continuing the concept, there’s Time, with a very clichéd motif, a totally nondescript track copied countless times, though with an interesting slide solo from Ziller, and then the closing filler Father’s Return, accompanied by “scary” thunder, rain and assorted rumbling noises that, in the hands of the ever-cheerful, smiling Bonfire, get watered down when it comes to painting drama.
It’s nice that gentlemen of a certain age take on new musical challenges. But “The Räuber” is far from its predecessor “Double X” (2006). It’s an in-between experiment with barely half the real Bonfire songs you’d expect from such a renowned band, so we’ll quickly forget it while waiting for their next classic hard rock album. It’s obvious the guys worked very fast on the material for the concept, that the idea of picking a concept didn’t exactly grow in their own backyard, and sadly the album also proves that when it comes to stringing together many different moods, Bonfire (at least with this particular concept, if not in general) are seriously untalented guys. “The Räuber” is really only for the biggest Bonfire fans. Everyone else, spin “Don’t Touch The Light” (1986), “Ready 4 Reaction” (1987) or “Point Black” (1989) instead and wait for the band’s new album.
Lineup
Claus Lessmann – vocals
Hans Ziller – guitar
Chris “Yps“ Limburg – guitar
Uwe Köhler – bass
Jürgen “Bam Bam“ Wiehler – drums
Production
Claus Lessmann & Hans Ziller
Tracklist
1. The Räuber
2. Bells of Freedom
3. Refugee Of Fate
4. The Oath
5. Blut und Tod
6. Love Don’t Lie
7. Black Night
8. Hip Hip Hurray
9. Do You Still Love Me
10. Let Me Be Your Water
11. Lass die Toten schlafen
12. The Good Die Young
13. Time
14. Father’s Return
BONUS TRACKS:
15. Love Don’t Lie (Acoustic Mix)
16. Do You Still Love Me (Acoustic Mix)
17. Hip Hip Hurray (German Version)
Album length: 71.09
