Artist: BLACK STAR RIDERS [THIN LIZZY]
Album: HEAVY FIRE VINYL (LP BLACK)

Release date: 2017
EAN/UPS: 727361388416
Media type: LP

This is a call to innocence… This is a call to arm yourself.”

There’s a beautiful purity to the finest rock ‘n’ roll, a thrilling simplicity in striking an over-amplified guitar chord, a transcendent joy in getting high on just volume, adrenaline and a backbeat. BLACK STAR RIDERS, lifers in an industry less secure than a secret in a soap opera, understand this, which is why »Heavy Fire«, the quintet’s third album for Nuclear Blast, sounds so fresh and exhilarating and alive.

Recorded with producer Nick Raskulinecz (FOO FIGHTERS, DEFTONES, RUSH) at Rock Falcon Studio in Franklin, Tennessee, the follow up to BSR’s acclaimed 2015 release »The Killer Instinct«, finds the quintet - frontman Ricky Warwick, guitarists Scott Gorham and Damon Johnson, bassist Robbie Crane and drummer Jimmy DeGrasso - in electric form, crashing through 10 tracks of swaggering, life-affirming hard rock with a shared passion and power both irresistible and inspiring. It’s another compelling chapter in the storied career of a band Classic Rock Magazine hails as “the most vital classic rock act on the circuit.”

“It’s an album that showcases the very best of what we can do as writers and players,” says Scott Gorham simply. “And an album we think will have a real resonance with our audience. We were excited making it, and I think BLACK STAR RIDERS fans are going to be even more excited hearing it.”

Though the history books will record that BLACK STAR RIDERS first came together in late 2012, the band’s spiritual roots stretch back four decades, to the moment, in the summer of 1974, when a 23 year old Scott Gorham walked into The Iroquo Restaurant in Tavistock Hill, North London, plugged a cheap Les Paul copy into a humming valve amplifier and first ran through 'The Rocker' with THIN LIZZY’s Phil Lynott and Brian Downey. Together with fiery Scotsman, and fellow guitar prodigy, Brian Robertson, Gorham re-energised the Irish rockers, helping to transform LIZZY into one of the most exciting, brilliant and influential bands of their generation. The Californian guitarist was an integral part of the band through to their break-up in 1983, and is recognised of one of the architects of a tough but melodic twin guitar sound which changed the face of hard rock. In 2012, recordings potentially earmarked for a first THIN LIZZY album since 1983’s »Thunder And Lightning«, were collated instead under the BLACK STAR RIDERS banner, and with the release of »All Hell Breaks Loose« in May 2013, the new-look band hit the road running.

“We started out emerging from the shadow of a legendary band, and that was a big shadow,” concedes Scott Gorham. “But I feel like BLACK STAR RIDERS quickly began owning our own space.”

Side A:

01. Heavy Fire
02. When The Night Comes In
03. Dancing With The Wrong Girl
04. Who Rides The Tiger
05. Cold War Love

Side B:

01. Testify Or Say Goodbye
02. Thinking About You Could Get Me Killed
03. True Blue Kid
04. Ticket To Rise
05. Letting Go Of Me


LINE-UP:

Ricky Warwick | vocals
Scott Gorham | guitars
Damon Johnson | guitars
Robbie Crane | bass
Jimmy DeGrasso | drums