City of Fire – City of Fire (2010)

Featuring Fear Factory’s Burton and Stroud, City of Fire has been around since 2008 and their self-titled release has been available to buy from the band’s site for quite a while now, but it’s finally getting a proper release date of August 24th, by Candlelight Records. This re-release includes three newly recorded bonus tracks: "Children of the Revolution”, "Last Wish", and "Dark Tides Revisited”, all of which we did not receive in our promo copy so will not be talking about them.

As you can imagine, Burton vocals are what makes this release very engaging for any fans of Metal and Hard Rock music. His characteristic pipes provide all the emotion needed for such a genre-combining release. The band’s music is not your typical “Metal” album and will surely puzzle some of Fear Factory’s biggest fans. But after a few spins, “City of Fire” comes out as a very enjoyable hard-rocking commercially-friendly release that features a group of great musicians doing exactly what they do best: great and catchy music.

With such an impressive line-up, the music of City of Fire is nothing short of excellent. There are atmospheric pieces (“Dark Tides”), slowly progressing epic songs (“Rain”), full-on Metal/Rock attacks (“Carve your Name”, “Coitus Interruptus”), and epic vocal melodies (“Rising”). So as you can see there is nothing missing in the ‘musical quality’ department of this debut release. The riffing, drumming, and everything else is just perfectly crafted to unfold in your ears like butter on pancakes.

We don’t believe we need to say anymore to have you enticed, either by curiosity or any other reason, to listen to City of Fire. So go to their MySpace and preview some tracks before pre-ordering this rocking debut CD from Candlelight Records.

Release: August 24th, 2010

Country: USA