Frontiers [Release date : 24.01.25]

18th studio album from Bonfire. First on Frontiers.

Nowadays, the band is founder/leader, Hans Ziller, with Dyan Mair on vocals; Ronnie Parks and Fabio Alessandrini form a solid rhythm section and Frank Pane twins up on guitar.

Ziller was diagnosed as bi-polar some years ago. The side effects resulted in long, focused bursts of creativity.

It’s worth looking back a bit.

In 2008, constantly underestimated, constantly striving to reach that awesome melodic moment where genres become unimportant, Ziller and then vocalist Claus Lessman wrote and recorded (with the band), a rock opera based on the “Sturm Und Drang” era play, ‘Der Rauber’, written by German playright, Fredrik Schiller.

The album sold out and so did every repress. The stage version went down a storm.

More than that. Lessons were learned, and so all the colour and drama associated with theatre got cemented into the band’s muscular, melodic hard rock.

This is all built into new album, Higher Ground, a reflection of life as seen from the vantage point of hard found experience.

The early part of the album has the recorded music sense of a highly effective docudrama, focused on Ziller’s despair – he claims that in 1989 he had been “fired from the band by his friends”.

This is put on record in one of the most accessible tracks, ‘I Died Tonight’ and further elaborated on amid ‘Lost All Control’s confessions and clever chord shifts.

As the titles suggest, ‘I Will Rise’ and ‘Higher Ground’ document Ziller’s journey back from yesterday’s despair to today’s relative equilibrium.

Both tracks are delivered with a religious intensity. Ziller and Frank Pane strike off each other, creating an exhilarating spark of fiery hard rock.

The compelling narrative aside, Higher Ground, the recording, is also convincing as a hard rock album, with genuinely exceptional songwriting and imaginative, tight as a drum arrangements.

On the back half of the album, ‘When Love Comes Down’ is a tender love song with big chords and attitude, while ‘Falling’s glorious twin guitar blast and pounding, bass heavy percussive beat, speeds up and slows down into a satisfyingly melodic hard rock song.

And so the band’s 18th album since 1986 is as much a journey through time as it is a musical experience.

It’s finished off, understandably, by a reprise of ‘Rock’n’Roll Survivor’. ****

Review by Brian McGowan

Featured Artist: JOSH TAERK

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Power Plays w/c 24 March 2025

HARRI LARKIN Too Close To The Sun (Robot Distro)
SANDNESS Not Your Dog (Rockshots Records)
DOCTOR BLACK Drag Me Down (indie)
COHEED AND CAMBRIA Goodbye Sunshine (Virgin Music Group)
LEONI JANE KENNEDY Closer (indie)
SMALL TOWN POLITICS Red Lights (indie)

Featured Albums w/c 24 March 2025

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2003 – 2024 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003 – 2024 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2003 – 2024 (Singer Songwriter)

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