Recorded on the
'Heart Full Of Fire' tour in April 2009,
'Live At The Apollo' combines the tracks from that album plus picks from the debut,
'False Metal/ Breakout'.
Programming, bass and drums dominate, with the guitars a bit far down in the mix. Considering it's a relatively small venue though (the Apollo Club in Helsinki), the sound is huge.recreating reasonable approximations of the studio recordings.
On both the debut
, 'False Metal/Breakout' and follow up, '
Heart Full Of Fire' the obvious references were Journey, Foreigner, Boston, REOS and so forth, it's only now I can hear echoes of underrated, overlooked melodic rock bands of the last 20 years, like Tower City, Total Stranger and Biloxi. Outstanding bands that were too late to ride the crest of the
AOR wave, talented bands that got washed away in the post Nirvana wipeout.
Clearly, after two decades of angsty, hardfaced, realpolitik rock, there are plenty of music fans who yearn for that melodic, anthemic, soft centred stadium rock, for which the eighties was known.
A new generation or an old generation on a nostalgia trip?
Bro Firetribe open their set with the
Magnum-esque
'Who Will You Run To Now'.
In fact, there are two
Magnum imitators in the first four songs, the second being the fabulous
'Wildest Dreams'.
Every step you take takes you back - the Van Halen-esque intro to
'One Single Breath' ; while
'Game They Call Love' recalls Lou Gramm and Mick Jones when they were a real force to be reckoned with.
These are fine efforts - vicarious pleasures to be sure - that nonetheless get under your skin.
Good, well balanced crowd noise maintains the live experience without getting obtrusive. A pristine recording maybe detracts from that, but better that than the muddy, one dimensional mix that is too often the substance of a live recording.
And once you put the derivations to one side, what sweeps you up are the sweet, ascending verses, the rolling choruses and the aurally adhesive hooks.
Unarguably, Bro Firetribe have drilled down deep into a rich seam of eighties'
AOR. It would be churlish to criticise the band's motivation. Let's just enjoy it while we can.
Written by
Brian Friday, March 19, 2010
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