Brother Firetribe – Heart Full of Fire

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Spinefarm Records
Produced by Tomppa Nikulainen/Emppu Vuorinen

Brother Firetribe was the coming together back in 2002 of future Leverage vocalist Pekka Ansio Heino and Nightwish guitarist Erno “Emppu” Vuorinen to essentially make US-meet-European style album-oriented melodic rock, for fun.

They released debut album False Metal (originally intended to be the name of the band) in 2006, and are now re-releasing it as a collector’s edition, re-named Break Out, on the same day as new album Heart Full of Fire, with all of their single b-sides included as bonus tracks. The UK edition of Heart Full of Fire also contains an exclusive bonus track, the Heart Full of Fire… And Then Some single b-side Two Hearts (Beat As One).

The new album continues their recreation of the ’80s AOR sound perfectly, packed full of keyboards, bright guitar riffs and harmony vocals. Most of the time they manage to neatly walk the fine line between clichë kitsch and strong melodic rock well enough to never drift too far in the wrong direction, but on occasion they slip. Particularly the horribly happy Out of My Head and throw-away I Heard It On My Radio.

But those particular two aside, hard rocking anthems like I Am Rock, catchy, driving tracks like excellent opener Who Will You Run To Now?, Journey style rockers (Game They Call Love) and early-period Bon Jovi-isms (Wildest Dreams, Going Out With A Bang and Runaways), around the anthemic title track and first single, which features new Nightwish vocalist Anette Olzon.

In favour of making an album aimed purely at making rock for the sake of having fun making rock the main album is strangely lacking in emotive ballads, but they’ve saved their take on that angle for the bonus track which, despite the horrifically clichë title, is a very strong example of ’80s rock balladry.

Indeed apart from the couple of wayward tracks, the album is a good example of classic ’80s AOR with modern production values and a certain sense of retrospective hindsight (almost) keeping everything in check.

“ recreation of the ’80s AOR sound ”

Tracklist: Who Will You Run To Now? / Wildest Dreams / Runaways / Game They Call Love / Play It From The Heart / Heart Full of Fire / Heard It On My Radio / Going Out With A Bang / Out of My Head / Chasing The Angels / I Am Rock
UK Bonus Track: Two Hearts (Beat As One)

Break Out re-issue Tracklist: Break Out / Valerie / I’m On Fire / Love Goes Down / Devil’s Daughter / Midnite Queen / One Single Breath / Lover Tonite / Spanish Eyes / Kill City Kid / Mighty Wings / Hungry For Heaven / Love Goes Down (Acoustic)

Written by Andy Lye
More: Albums, Hard Rock, Brother Firetribe