Author: George Marsden

You should feel sorry for the male rock-band. Despite boys wielding guitars being emblematic of what a popular-music act looks like, commercially speaking they’ve been on the skids in recent years. Yes, Oasis and Green Day can draw crowds big enough to keep their respective band members (and, more importantly, the ex-wives of said band members) in the black for another decade or so; but those crowds are motivated by a nostalgia, while the next biggest acts are successful by appealing to fans of genres, like death metal or lo-fi indy, that leave them masters of sub-cultures but with limited mass appeal. If you want to make it big in this industry, son, learn to rap. And if you find yourself lacking even the basic amount of talent required for that, you could always become the latest bland hack to take a punt at the not-yet-busted-flush ‘singer-songwriter’ thing.

So it’s with some pity that I listened to the latest EP from Edinburgh hard-rock four piece ‘Blackfyre Rising’. Because it isn’t bland, and the boys certainly have talent. But alas; the way the money’s flowing at the moment, there’s just no Glastonbury stage in that. Unless the winds of fashion change dramatically, the most they can expect with songs like ‘I’m Alright’ is to rule over a musical nichedom. Of course, maybe this is good enough (not to mention lucrative enough); but to pity it crosses your mind at the point when you remember that songs like this used have a much bigger audience. It’s the EP’s opener, and it starts us off on a note of rugged triumphalism familiar from hard rock heavyweights as diverse as Van Halen and The Darkness. There’s little in the way of a build-up. The guitar explodes on to us as the drums put things at a gallop from the start; true to genre form, the vocals are in the high range.

The lyrics cement a feeling of hard-won positivity. Singer James Brown (if I was him I’d go by a stage name, but maybe he’s made of bolder stuff) takes us through a series setbacks and mistakes, finally landing us on the chorus’s victorious final line “But tonight, I’m alright!”. Like the greatest examples of the genre, this is Friday night music: an enthusiastic moment of glorying in triumph over life’s trials, combined with the bitter recognition that it will inevitably pass and the same trials resume. Rather than being downbeat, though, this is a species of optimistic realism, an observation that’s only confirmed by the buoyant guitar solos.

I invoked Van Halen just then, but perhaps that’s a little unfair given Blackfyre Rising’s instrumentation and writing are both a lot more varied than the fare you get from the belters of ‘Jump’. Take the EP’s second track, ‘The Cycle’. It opens wildly with some guitar shredding (guitarist Dave Taylor doesn’t do foreplay, it seems) before falling into a pacey trot for the delivery of its image laden lyrics. The first line (“I spent long years in the wilderness searching…”) sets us off in that bombastic tone habitual with hard rockers since Cream and Led Zeppelin recorded songs about Ulysses and Vikings, respectively. As the guitar playing gets more virtuosic throughout, the listener is impressed more and more by the pleasing sense of a man really enjoying himself with his instrument— a great deal of fun is clearly being had. What’s more, we’re led through two major tone shifts. The first slows everything down; the guitars fall into velvety whines to let the percussion cut through, then there’s a ramp up while Brown’s vocals go even higher. At the second, complete silence precedes another explosion as the track ends on a crumbling wall of sound. Requiem in pace etc. Eddie Van Halen, but I’m afraid I prefer the lads from Auld Reekie. 

‘Spellbound Woman’ is the most thematically interesting track here. Turn on any radio or playlist and you’re sure to quickly come across a dozen songs from male singers on the experience of being in thrall to female charms; only seldomly do you get something on the reversed situation. I would suppose that musicians experience this dynamic more often than the rest of us talentless mortals (the bastards!), so this is surprising; Blackfyre Rising pull it off with aplomb. The last track, ‘The Tempest’, is the most solemn. Clearly the intention is to leave things on a strong statement (the song opens with “We all live in a fallen world…”); stylistically, it pushes through to heavy metal. If anything, it’s an interesting hint at the musical direction the boys might want to go in.

And no, maybe that direction doesn’t lead to Glastonbury. If it did, I’d expect it might take some selling out, which would be an even bigger shame. For I’m glad this sort of music is still being played, and being played well. There’s a certain kind of loud, male sincerity to it that’s often overlooked in discussions on the supposed deficiencies men exhibit when expressing themselves; or, at least, men with long-hair and electric guitars don’t exhibit these difficulties. For that reason alone, Blackfyre Rising deserve a bigger following and, I hope, some mainstream success. So get some Pro-Palestine chants going at the next gig, lads, there might be an Isle of Wight spot in it.

George Marsden is a graduate of Glasgow University, where he read English and Classics. His writing has appeared in IM-1776, The Mallard, and Sublation Magazine, among other outlets. As song writing is the only form of modern poetic expression with a mass audience, George thinks it merits special critical attention. He also aims to counter the nefarious influence that Oasis have had on British culture. Read his work here.