It goes without saying that the first pair of Firehouse albums are absolute belters within the melodic hard rock scene.
Written by: gdmonline
ARTIST: Firehouse
ALBUM: Hold Your Fire
LABEL: Epic
SERIAL: EK 48615
YEAR: 1992
CD REISSUE: Discogs Reissue List
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: USA
LINEUP: C.J. Snare – lead vocals, keyboards * Bill Leverty – guitars, backing vocals * Perry Richardson – bass, backing vocals * Michael Foster – drums, percussion, backing vocals
TRACK LISTING: 01 Reach For The Sky * 02 Rock You Tonight * 03 Sleeping With You * 04 You’re Too Bad * 05 When I Look Into Your Eyes * 06 Get In Touch * 07 Hold Your Fire * 08 The Meaning Of Love * 09 Talk Of The Town * 10 Life In The Real World * 11 Mama Didn’t Raise No Fool * 12 Hold The Dream
WEBLINKS: Site Link
Background
It goes without saying that the first pair of Firehouse albums are absolute belters within the melodic hard rock scene.Sure, the debut Firehouse was a bit of a firecracker upon release, spending ages in the charts and generating numerous hit singles.
With ‘Hold Your Fire’, the band and management kept the formula intact, similar sounding songs, with David Prater once again twiddling the dials. We come to this album review rather late, and identified it as a gap in the Firehouse back catalogue here on GDM.
The Songs
The obvious hit single here is the ballad ‘When I Look Into Your Eyes’, which made it to #8 on the Billboard single charts. It is a copy-cat of the first album’s hit ‘Love Of A Lifetime’. But this album isn’t just about that song.
Other tracks like ‘Reach For The Sky’ (the second single) and the title track ‘Hold Your Fire’ have this ability to combine tough guitar riffs with accompanying clean guitar melodies, and sometimes also with acoustic passages too.
The third single ‘Sleeping With You’ is a very catchy pop metal number, and has a vibe similar to ‘Don’t Treat Me Bad’. Elsewhere, hard rockers such as ‘Rock You Tonight’, ‘You’re Too Bad’ and ‘Mama Didn’t Raise No Fool’ all show Firehouse plying their trade at the harder end of the spectrum.
In Summary
Released in the summer of 1992, the album spent half the year in the Billboard album charts peaking at #23 and eventually certified as a gold seller. Firehouse would take a break for several years, returning in 1995 for the release of ‘III’.
Firehouse on Video
Click to go to YTM album page.
