Posted in Whathaveyou on March 12th, 2015 by JJ Koczan
My understanding is that weekend passes for Desertfest Berlin 2015 are sold out, but individual day tickets are still available. That is, if you want to show up on Friday and bum out on missing the rest of the weekend so hard that you wind up buying tickets for Saturday and Sunday as well, you can. Hey, it’s better than nothing.
The latest addition to the fest is Darmstadt heavy rockers Bushfire. Their last album, Heal Thy Self (review here), came out late in 2013, and it was a significant jump from their 2010 debut, Black Ash Sunday (review here), so I can’t help but wonder what these dudes might be up to now. The slot at Desertfest Berlin 2015 will apparently be their first show of the year. Kind of a late start, but a good one all the same.
Here’s the announcement from the Desertfest crew:
28th band to be confirmed for DesertFest Berlin 2015: Bushfire! The Darmstadt’s five-piece will bring you a good measure of blues, stoner, doom and southern rock.
With three demo Eps and two albums, shows and tours through half of Europe, TV airplay and a loyal fanbase – all of that without any label or management – BUSHFIRE is that kind of DIY band we love, and we are thrilled to have them on board!
Desertfest 3-day passes are now sold out, but stay tuned for the day tickets release, that will happen very soon!
Red Fang + Orange Goblin + Brant Bjork & The Low Desert Punk Band + Acid King + Ufomammut + My Sleeping Karma + Conan + Black Pyramid + Karma To Burn + Brutus + Dopethrone + The Atomic Bitchwax + Lo-Pan + Baby Woodrose + The Picturebooks + Toner Low + Kamchatka + Dirty Fences + Heat + Bushfire + Mountain Witch + Mother Engine + Moaning Cities + The Sun And The Wolf + Cigale + Riff Fist + Travelin Jack + Tau + more
There’s an undertone of burl that’s carried through the entirety of Bushfire‘s Dec. 2013 second long-player, Heal Thy Self, and that’s due in no small part to vocalist Bill Brown‘s low-in-the-mouth approach. He’s not exactly shooting for “whiskey-soaked Southern” or something like that, but his post-grunge style remains consistent throughout the nine tracks of the vinyl, which arrives in a sturdy gatefold with a quality, 180g platter, heavy stock dust jacket and foldout liner notes that further the visual theme from artist Ingo “Krimalkin” Lohse, the intricacy of whose work is all the more appreciable in the 12″ format. Heal Thy Selfis a different experience on LP as opposed to CD or Bandcamp stream or whatever it might be, but however one approaches it, the Darmstadt, Germany, double-guitar five-piece offer songwriting coinciding with the dependable physical feel of the Heal Thy Selfalbum. Their material is straightforward in a bruiser sense and asks few indulgences while staving off monotony with change-it-up cuts like the moody “Brother” on side B and the cowbell-infused boogie of “Tuff Luv,” which closes side A.
No shortage of doomer roots are on display — album opener “Failure” ends with whispers eerily reminiscent of those announcing the departure of “Children of the Grave” on Master of Reality— but Bushfire‘s trade is heavy, riff-driven rock and roll. If it had anything to do with getting high, I’d be tempted to call it stoner, but their approach is tighter than that designation seems to warrant these days, the two guitars of Marcus Bischoff and Miguel Pereira comfortable in a leadership role when they need to be and driving the grooves that Brown ably rides in his vocals, bassist Nick Kurz offering more to the personality of the whole than just tonal weight, though plenty of that as well, and drummer Tom Hoffmann punctuating the roll and suitably getting into some double-kick bass when “Glossolalia” moves in its back end to some surprisingly blackened screams for a bit of flourish that Bushfire don’t return to, but makes its point anyway and gives a different context to the from-the-gut shouting that caps the Down-style riffing of “Elephant,” which in turn leads to “Tuff Luv,” the verses there reminding more of The Atomic Bitchwax than anything so gruffly intentioned.
Side B has a somewhat different personality. Production makes most of side A consistent sound-wise despite the fact that Bushfire are leaning to one side or another within their aesthetic, but with four songs as opposed to five and the closing duo of “Hungry” and “Dream” checking in at just under seven minutes each, the vibe is bound to be somewhat distinct from the first half of Heal Thy Self. All things are relative, of course, but where “Failure” set the album into motion with a mounting swell of feedback and distortion, “Objector” opens side B with quiet guitar and a subdued, contemplative verse. It doesn’t last, and soon enough “Objector” is into some of Heal Thy Self‘s ballsiest swaggering, all starts-and-stops and “hey whoa yeah”-style shouting. Fair enough. “Brother,” also one of the longer songs, develops the ideas that “Objector” seems to hint at in its intro — though is plenty heavy besides — and with a slower pace sets out a hook that’s among the most resonant Bushfire have to offer, “Hungry” seeming to work in a similar vein until a build in the midsection into faster riffing provides fluid transition to a shuffle that recalls some of “Tuff Luv” from side A. It’s the stomp that wins out, topped with wah guitar as it is, and “Hungry” seems to drunk-stumble into “Dream.”
Honestly, after both “Brother” and “Hungry,” “Dream” comes across as something of an afterthought. There isn’t much on offer that the prior 41 minutes haven’t shown Bushfire already capably displaying, but the opening crashes give some sense of arrival anyway, and the finale moves at a decent clip, so it’s not likely to offend either if you’ve made it this far into the record. A vague spoken sample arrives in the second half of the song over the last guitar solo, and after “Dream” stomps to its finish, there are some piano noises and what sounds like a bird of some sort, no doubt of some significance to whatever it was the dream itself may have been about. I do not know how many copies of Heal Thy Selfthe band pressed — mine’s hand-numbered as #190 on side B, so at least that many — but it’s a substantial effort in both sound and physical construction for a DIY band to undertake, and to Bushfire‘s credit, they pull it off front to back, whether it’s the coherence of their style and production or the atmosphere that the detailed lines of the gatefold convey. They’ve been around for a decade and still sound like they’re growing, but Heal Thy Selfhas plenty to offer a vinyl hound with a craving for thick grooves.
Posted in Reviews on February 6th, 2012 by JJ Koczan
Heavy blues bruisers Bushfire make their home in Darmstadt, Germany. It’s the same town that produced stonerly trio Wight, with whom Bushfire took to the road for the “Malakas of the Universe” tour at the end of 2011. To date, Bushfire’s self-issued Black Ash Sunday (2010; more recently put out on vinyl) is their only official release, following three demos with nearly an hour’s worth of thickened riff rock and burly tones. The five-piece have undergone some lineup changes since, but on Black Ash Sunday, the unit of guitarists Miguel Pereira and Marcus Bischoff, vocalist Bill Brown, bassist Thomas Glaser (since replaced by Nick K.) and drummer Tom Hoffmann works well together, clearly having learned something about their sound and what they wanted to accomplish musically through their extensive demoing process. Taken as a whole, the album is cohesive, if long at 13 tracks, and showcases a marked Clutch influence, both in Brown’s vocal patterning and in the riff work of Pereira and Bischoff, whose bouncing fuzz prevails on songs like “Black Ash Sunday,” which follows the swamp blues intro “Midsummer Porch View.” The overall sound of the band is full, and as a standalone singer, Brown earns his spot, even if he gives way every now and again to the lower-mouth “stoner rock voice,” which ups the dudely quotient in the band’s overall vibe and ultimately takes away from the musical variety.
Germany being a hotbed of heavy psychedelia, one might expect those elements to show up in Bushfire’s sound, but they don’t. Even though a cut like “The Fiend” has a slower, groovier, more open feel to its verse, it’s grounded stylistically, and that current runs strong throughout Black Ash Sunday. That has its ups and downs as regards the overall listening experience, in that even a song like “Hundredsixtysix,” which has a break in the middle from the forward-pushed riffing, is back to it soon enough, and though Bushfire prove to work quite well within the formula – in that song in particular adding a kind of Helmet-style crunch to the overall sound without sacrificing melody in the chorus – it’s too easy as the record plays out to lose sight of which tracks stand out for what reasons. Fans of Washington D.C. heavy rockers Borracho will recognize a lot of what Bushfire are doing here, tonally and in terms of approach – though it’s worth noting that Borracho’s Splitting Sky was a 2011 release and this is 2010 – and ultimately, Black Ash Sunday falls prey to a similar first-album misstep as that record did: too much of a good thing. The ripping biker metal solo on “Little Man” wastes not one move in kicking as much ass as possible, and the late-album boogie of “Forget Regret” is a high point of the whole listening experience – one of the best riffs here, hands down – but getting there feels like twice the trip by the time you arrive. It’s not necessarily a question of songwriting as one of abundance.
