Bonfire - Higher Ground (2025)

Country: Germany
Style: Hard and Heavy
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 24 Jan 2025
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While the five years between 2020's Fistful of Fire and this marks the longest period Bonfire have gone without releasing a new studio album, they've certainly been busy in that time. They hired a new singer in Dyan Mair, best known for Greek power metal band AngelMora, and a new drummer in Fabio Alessandrini, who's played for everyone and we all know how good he is. The last time his drumming showed up at Apocalypse Later was about a year ago in an album by Todd Grubbs. This new line-up also re-recorded the band's first three albums, which came out back in the eighties in a very different era for production. Before the line-up change, they put out an "almost unplugged album" in Roots.

So they've been busy, but they're back to business with another new studio album, which I believe counts as their eighteenth, discounting re-recordings and alternate language editions. It does the job that Bonfire tend to do, which is somehow always heavier than I remember it being. They skirt the boundary between hard rock and heavy metal, often shifting from one to the other within the same song, and they do that very well indeed. I gave Fistful of Fire an 8/10 and, while I'm not going to follow suit this time, this is an easy 7/10 that I enjoyed consistently through multiple times. Not a single song had faded by the fourth listen.

To illustrate how they hover around that border, this album kicks off with I Will Rise, a bombastic hard rock song with an obviously metal pace and mostly metal guitars. That's followed by Higher Ground, with a more overt metal riff in the Accept tradition but still featuring plenty more vocal hooks and melodies. This is a catchy song indeed. Fallin' and Jealousy, both later in the album, are driving hard rock songs that dip over the boundary frequently, while Spinnin' in the Black finishes the album proper with an elegant hard rock vibe and a serious kick.

The lightest the album gets is When Love Comes Down, which is a power ballad, but power ballad in Bonfire's mindset means a song that rocks a lot more and contains much less cheese than your average power ballad. The heaviest is Come Hell or High Water, which features a strong riff right out of the Tony Iommi playbook and prowls along just looking for trouble. New fish Dyan Mair has a good time channelling his inner Tony Martin and he sounds very authoratitive indeed. He works well in this lower register.

He's also very able to hit much higher pitches, something he does in escalation moments all over the album, but I felt that he didn't seem comfortable hanging out up there in the heights on first single I Died Tonight. It's a poppier song that opens up almost like disco and soon finds grounding in a Europe-esque pop rock mindset, albeit with plenty of crunch behind it. It makes sense to take this one higher and Mair has the chops to do it but I much prefer him in the lower register aiming high only when a moment requires it.

Mair is a strong addition to the band who feels like he's been there all along. While this is his first new album, he has those three re-recorded albums in the bag too, so this is kinda sorta album four for him. Alessandrini is always impressive and he has plenty of experience in a whole slew of metal genres. It doesn't surprise that he's ultra-reliable here, though he hardly shows off at all. He just makes this seem easy, whatever the pace.

That leaves the longer term members, but only Hans Ziller dates back all the way to the beginning of Bonfire in 1986, let alone its days as Cacumen in the early seventies. As obvious as the vocals on melodic hard rock and heavy metal albums tend to be, his guitar refuses to give way entirely and I appreciated the guitarwork as much as the vocals across the album. The riffs on Come Hell or High Water and Lost All Control are glorious and I have no complaints about the ones on Higher Ground and Fallin' either. There aren't as many solos as I'd like but what we get are enjoyable. Frank Pané joined Ziller on guitar in 2014, the same year that Ronnie Parkes joined on bass. Both are still here and reliable.

The reason I'm going with a 7/10 here instead of the 8/10 I gave Fistful of Fire is because the songs don't stand out quite so much. I had three easy highlights there and a few hovering behind. Here, I'd only place Come Hell or High Water at that level, though nothing else lets the side down. This is a strong and reliable album that remains enjoyable across multiple listens. The new fish don't feel like new fish in the slightest. It's all good stuff and it bodes really well for the future. However, by comparison, it's just not quite up to the standards of its predecessor.