German metal masters Bonfire recently released their 17th studio album, and sixth since 2010, Fistful of Metal on AFM Records. It is a collection of 14 exceptionally well produced and sonically powerful tracks, that exemplify why this group is one of the most prolific most popular and most venerable metal acts working in Europe today.
Like most metal bands, the idea of only releasing singles periodically or EPs, like many other genres currently do because of the seismic cultural changes in the way people ‘consume’ music, is anathema to them. Metal fans want albums, for the most part, with all the accoutrements, and want them regularly from the bands they love.
“If you look at the old days, all you could get was a physical record or a cassette, and the musicians writing those songs would make so much more money, because that was the only way that fans could get the songs. Now, with digital downloads and streaming and everything else, people may only buy one song, if they buy it at all, or they just pay for a streaming service. I think for a million plays on Spotify you get $5000 as the writer. If you sold a million records back in the day – totally different story,” said Ronnie Parkes, the only American member of this veteran German metal powerhouse.
“The cool thing about metal fans is they support the bands the love, and they will buy a record, because they know it’s helping support the musicians and the songwriters. So, we’re pretty thankful for that. And plus, you can say so much more as a band on a full album, and I think people, especially metal fans, still want a collection of songs and a cool package and that sort of thing.”
Bonfire has a legacy stretching back to an earlier incarnation that began in 1972 in Bavaria called Cacumen, by teenagers Hans Ziller and his brother Frank {who left in 1978]. After garnering a solid following in Germany and some of the neighbouring countries, they signed a major label international deal with BMG Music, who asked them to change their name, thinking it hard to pronounce. Bonfire became the new moniker, and since then the band has had its ups and downs, lineup changes, short hiatuses and other common vicissitudes of the music industry.
But Ziller has remained firmly with his hand on the Bonfire tiller, directing the band through the sometimes rough waters and through three different redevelopments, including the most recent which happened in 2015 when, seemingly dead and buried, he revived the Bonfire name, along with a new cast of musical characters including veteran German guitarist Frank Pane, New Jersey native, bassist Parkes. Alexx Stahl became the frontman a year later, with drummer Andre Hilgers coming in just before the process for creating what would become Fistful of Fire began in 2019.
“Hans is actually a really good guy. He is totally open to anything, but he does have the last word on everything because this is his band, this is his baby. He loves everybody’s input, and we try to do everything as a team. But, yeah, Hans is the star of the show, basically. Everybody knows Hans, and everybody respects him. It’s cool to have that sort of presence in the band he is a good guy and very down to earth and he has a good sense of humour,” said Parkes, from his New Jersey home, where he is currently quarantined during the Covid-19 pandemic. Interestingly, once movement is allowed again, he confirmed he will be moving to Ireland to be closer to his German bandmates, and also to his wife’s family, who is from Ireland.
“The whole band realized how much Hans has invested in this band and in the Bonfire name and accepts it. It’s his band, it’s not our band. And we all put in 150 per cent to make it work. Everything he wants to do; we try to do. He’s really got this way about him where he says, ‘okay, this is what we’ve got to do,’ and he just goes out and does it, no fuss. He is always very focused, and he just keeps moving forward until we reach our goal or get done whatever it is that we need to get done.”
Parkes also spoke in glowing terms about the band’s lead vocalist, Stahl, who he says emphatically is the real deal, both onstage and off.
“Alexx has won everybody over. He is a very likeable guy and a great singer and has a really great stage presence. Honestly, everybody in the band is really nice and everybody gets along, which has been good for the whole band. This is the fifth album that Alexx has been on, he did the double album of covers {Legends, released in 2018] and the Live on Holy Ground [2019] album, and this is his third studio album, and had really put his mark on the band. He definitely has an aura about him. I was thinking he reminded me of Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, in terms of the presence he has, to me anyways. I don’t know if everybody sees him like that, but he’s got a swagger. Also, he’s really nice, and has a good sense of humour and is a great singer,” Parkes said.
“He is a really good guy, he really connects with people, and he works hard at his craft for this band. One of the first shows he played with us, we actually replaced UFO at a festival because something happened, and they couldn’t play the show. At the last minute they called us to fill in for them. It was one of Alexx’s first shows and he forgot the lyrics to one of the songs, and he stopped everybody playing and talked to all the people and said, ‘I messed up. I used to make love to my girlfriend to this song, and I can’t believe I just messed up the lyrics. Can we please start it over?’ At first, we were like, ‘oh my God, what just happened?’ But the crowd loved it. It said to them that we’re human, that Alexx is a good, honest guy and that he was so human that he is not afraid to humble himself.
“And a lot of times, since they speak German and I’m the only English speaking person in the band, sometimes I have to correct something he is singing, like they really extend their ‘Rs’ and for them ‘Ws’ are ‘Vs’, even though like for wasser, which is German for water, they say ‘vasser.’ So sometimes that stuff happens, and Alexx doesn’t have a problem taking that criticism, even though it’s not really criticism, whereas other people, especially other lead singers, have such an ego that you can’t say anything to them.”
Interestingly, being the only English speaker in a band full of Germans also means that Parkes has come to be Bonfire’s chief lyricist in this iteration of the band, meaning he has great influence over the tone and topicality of each song.
“I am still working really hard to learn German and I can get by. But they say things that even with a translator on my phone, is still doesn’t make sense. But it’s because they have accents and dialect and they use a lot of slang and have a lot of sayings that just don’t make any sense when you’re trying to learn the language. But because our songs are all in English, I write all the lyrics,” he said.
“I have written songs my whole life, but I had never really written lyrics. Usually in the bands I was in, the singers wrote all the lyrics. When [former Bonfire and Accept singer] Dave Reece left the band, they said to me, ‘you’re the English speaker, why don’t you try it?’ And I said okay. So, I looked into it and really researched and studied what makes a good song. That’s just how I am, if I do something, I want to do it well, I don’t want to do something shitty or half-assed. I looked at lots of other songs to see what makes a good song, and how do people write these songs and what does this guy write about and what does that guy write about. And after really studying it and I started to try it and I guess I have done a pretty good job, because I have been turning out lyrics for the last three studio albums,” he said, adding that the co-operative and easy-going nature of Stahl makes it easy for him to present the lyrics and help him interpret them in the recording booth.
“The band looks at it like this: the record is the record and live is live. A lot of singers will say, ‘hey man, I don’t want to sing that high every night, I don’t want to go that high in the studio because it’s going to be hard when I do it live.’ But with us it’s like, Hans says the record is the record and live is live. If you have to change it to sing live then change it when you sing live, but this is the way it will be on the record, and that’s how you will have to sing it on the record. Alexx is totally cool with that.
“As far as me and Alexx working together, I go in the vocal booth with him and we go through every line, we go through all the melodies and pronunciations and then he sings it and of course puts his own touches on the words too. It’s works well for us.”
Parkes said there usually isn’t any sort of overarching theme or narrative arc to a Bonfire album, but that the goal for each new album is to keep moving the bar forward in terms of compositional, production and melodic excellence.
“We’re just trying to make the best records that we can. That was the direction we were given when it was decided to make this new album, Fistful of Fire. Another record was due, we need to make it, so we make it as best as we can. The last couple of records got great responses, so we had that hanging over our heads that this one has to be good – it’s got to be better than those. It can’t be the same or lesser, you can’t just throw something together, it’s got to be good. And we really worked hard on this record, it’s not like it just sort of fell together,” he said.
“And the process usually starts with someone, usually Hans, saying okay, we’re in the writing process, so anybody who has songs or song ideas is to send them to me, and so everybody starts demoing their ideas. Usually the main writers are Hans and Frank, the two guitarists. I have a lot of freedom when I write the lyrics, but I do know that Hans likes anthems.”
Rock and Roll Survivors is just such an anthem, and is a kick-ass, rollicking ride that epitomizes Bonfire‘s potent blend of incendiary musicianship and memorable melodies.
“The song is really about two people being together during tough times. It starts out as these people, a guy and a girl, and they have nothing, and they meet, and rock music is the thing that keeps them together through the good times and the bad. It’s kind of like Dio’s Rock and Roll Children. But it has another meaning, because it’s also kind of talking about the band, and how the band has been doing so much and that we are also rock and roll survivors. So that’s the whole thing behind the song, and that’s also kind of why we had the boxing ring and stuff in the music video,” Parkes explained.
“And that’s a cool story too. The woman in the video is Tina Schussler, and she is a former champion kickboxer [as well as bodybuilder, former mayoral candidate, and also now a singer/songwriter]. We had met her on another tour. She was friends with [former Toto singer] Bobby Kimball. I guess he had been in Germany many times before and they became friends. So, when we did the tour for our covers album, we had these guest singers on the road, and he was one of them and did some Toto songs. And when he came on the road, she came too, and that’s how we met her. When we started thinking about some sort of boxing component to the video, we immediately thought, ‘let’s call Tina.’ She has her own fitness studio with a boxing ring and also has a video company, so we thought it worked out perfectly. And then she said she wanted to be in the video too, and we’re like, ‘hey, even better.’ I worked out so well.”
Another excellent track on the album Devil Made Me Do It, which is the ages-old tale of falling to temptation and then paying the price afterwards.
“It’s that thing where you’ve got the angel on one shoulder and on the other shoulder you’ve got the devil, and a lot of people do what they do, even though the angel, or sometimes it’s this little voice inside, saying, ‘you don’t have to do that. You don’t have to get drunk tonight’ or whatever. But, for some reason you do anyways. So that’s what that song is about,” Parkes said.
For more information on Bonfire, Fistful of Fire and possible tour dates – pandemic permitting – visit www.facebook.com/BONFIREofficial, or www.bonfire.de.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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