CD Review: World Fire Brigade - Spreading My Wings
Entertainment One
All Access Review: A-
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| World Fire Brigade - Spreading My Wings 2012 |
World Fire Brigade is certainly not low on Fuel. This trio
of post-grunge renegades counts Fuel front man Brett Scallions, Smile Empty
Soul lead singer/guitarist Sean Danielsen, and Eddie Wohl – best known as a
producer/mixer for both bands, as well as Anthrax – among its members. And
then, adding more Fuel to the fire, there’s Ken Schalk, Fuel’s current drummer,
working in the trenches doing all the percussive dirty work for World Fire
Brigade. On Spreading My Wings, their
debut LP, these fire bugs have ignited a barely contained burn of riff-hungry,
commercially accessible hard rock set ablaze with heated passion and intense
emotions. They have no intention of putting out the blaze.
Decidedly heavier and more metallic than Fuel, World Fire
Brigade was originally conceived as a sort of songwriting collective
established to create material for other artists. In the end, they just couldn’t
bring themselves to give away the product of their sweat and toil. No, this
stuff, caught in the grip of hooks that simply don’t let go, was too good to
pawn off on someone else.
Unexpectedly bracing, Spreading
My Wings is a grinding, explosive work order that World Fire Brigade carries
out with surprising vigor and guitars stuck in overdrive, especially on the
gnarled, growling “Don’t Walk Away” and the slamming, groove-oriented serpents
“All My Demands” and “Never Saw the Wall” – all of them red-hot furnaces of ferocious,
prison-riot riffs and sizzling, screaming guitar leads, possibly inspired by
the appearances of Anthrax’s Rob Caggiano and Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready. More
radio-friendly, “All You Know,” “Weight of the World,” and the title track all
go through their periods of almost thrash-like intensity and rage, but when
they dissipate and the vast, big-sky choruses that made Fuel famous come into
view, plumes of melody fan out across the great expanse and take your breath
away, as they do in “Shell of Me.”
Falling into predictable patterns, World Fire Brigade simply
can’t help itself when it arrives at those choruses. They have to be vast and emit
retina-scorching UV rays, the soaring vocals must be laid out on blankets of
swaying, sustained guitar chords lightly fried with distortion, and they have
to arrive right on time, as if they have to stick to a tight schedule. A
welcome anomaly is “Fly,” a tender, delicately sketched acoustic ballad that goes
by quickly, but is terribly affecting. So are the introspective lyrics of Spreading My Wings, which seek to leach
the toxins of hurt, betrayal, anger and world-weary resignation from World Fire
Brigade’s body and spirit. The cleansing starts now.
- Peter Lindblad
