Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The ashes are someone else’s property, they fly off into the night along with the embers of a broken promise, the dreams and unfulfilled desires in the wreck of another’s pyre; such is the desire to find new ways to enjoy the Rock genre that is takes at times more than it gives. Some pyres might be extinguished before they start but for Kingbreaker To The Fire is a call to watch it burn brightly in the night, the illumination and the heat is enough to draw the crowd in closer, the chat, the bubbling conversation a welcome relief and is to the fire we turn.

Kingbreaker’s hold on the well lit torch is such that it could sear the flesh off other band’s natural cohesiveness, yet is barely noticeable when it comes to the songs they have on offer and perform round the ever increasing bonfire filled with other’s vanities but their own humble nature intact, no sense of scaring or blistering to be seen, this is music on their own terms and it is a welcome and full of demand.

What Kingbreaker manage to do during the album, especially on songs such as the album opener Outlaw, Straightjacket, Feast and Decay and Bury The Witness is to add fuel, the unobserved cans of petrol to the fire, the ones who find their thoughts singed obviously not aware of how dangerous it is to play with a raging inferno, especially one that you have no hope of putting out.

Kingbreaker don’t put out the fire, they revel in the noise, the splintering of dry and uncut wood and the flames, the glorious yellows of the vocals, the deep assuring orange growl of the combined bass and drum and the screech of joy from the guitar, the final burst of energy when the night is over and all that remains is the truth of heavy rock, that it cannot be dismissed and it can never be put out.

A dynamic album, To The Fire lives up to its name and scorches the unwary and fuels the devoted in equal measure.

Ian D. Hall