{"id":61237,"date":"2024-02-23T00:32:18","date_gmt":"2024-02-22T23:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/?p=61237"},"modified":"2024-03-02T04:47:01","modified_gmt":"2024-03-02T03:47:01","slug":"fire-testament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/fire-testament\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire! – Testament"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There\u2019s a bit of the Lizard King about \u2018Work Song For A Scattered Past\u2019, the opening salvo from the latest Fire! album Testament<\/em>, with its souped-up swagger and whiskey-soaked, careening strut redolent of everything from the \u2018Alabama Song\u2019 and \u2018Back Door Man\u2019 to \u2018Wild Child\u2019, the \u2018Roadhouse Blues\u2019 and \u2018Been Down So Long\u2019 which serves as a loaded riposte to \u2018Love Her Madly\u2019. On all of those Doors albums that sound came courtesy of Ray Manzarek\u2019s keyboard bass and a slew of session musicians, including Larry Knechtel and Doug Lubahn, the jazz bassist Leroy Vinnegar, the blues rock pioneer Lonnie Mack and Elvis Presley\u2019s last bassist Jerry Scheff of the TCB Band, but on Testament<\/em> the burden falls squarely on the shoulders of Johan Berthling, who adds a saunter and a slide to that old walking bass, proud and brash, leering and a little bit glassy-eyed as it cuts a swathe right from the outset of the composition. For their eighth album as a trio \u2013 without including their ensemble work as part of the Fire! Orchestra, whose recent wayfarer Echoes<\/em> proved one of Culturedarm\u2019s favourite records of 2023<\/a> \u2013 Fire! spurn all the accoutrements of flutes and electronics, extras and special guests, recording live in the studio to analogue tape with Berthling\u2019s bass suspended by Mats Gustafsson\u2019s squalling and chafing sax, cut through by Andreas Werlin who keeps up an incessant march behind the drum set.<\/p>\n