FIERCE HEART – War For The World (2020)

Do you remember the the great band FIERCE HEART featuring guitar hero Rex Carroll and uber-producer Chris-Lord Alge? Their self-titled album from 1985 was posted on this blog in its remastered form.
Well, Fierce Heart always remained active with Carroll carrying the torch, now fueled and driven by their core fan base, the got busy in the studio and created a new album – the kick ass ”War For The World”, to be released tomorrow.
Classic US Hard Rock with a bluesy core plus soulful vocals and swirling solos courtesy of Carroll are the highlights of ”War For The World”, and album we HIGHLY Recommended to check out if you are fan of the genre.

I’m very excited. Fierce Heart‘s only record, their self-titled 1985 debut, still is one of the best ‘unknown’ melodic hard rock albums from the era.
The flipside of that fact, of course, is that it’s hard – nigh on impossible, surely – for anything new from the band to have the same sort of impact on this reviewers affections after thirty five years of blank-faced adoration.

Fair enough, there’s nothing here to match the titanic brilliance of Never Gonna Make Me Cry, the standout cut from that storied debut – but, once you’ve accepted that fact, the truth reveals itself pretty quickly – ”War For The World” is in pretty much every other way the equal of it’s predecessor.

After an opening salvo from the peerless guitar maestro that is Rex Carroll, first track proper ”Built For Speed” blows your speakers apart with its unvarnished rock n’roll truth. This is prime US hard rock, from the long tradition that the States upholds of this kinda all-guns-blazing, sing-it-shout-it aural experience. It’s a perfect album opener (and Carroll supplies another superb solo as well as if everything else that’s great about the song wasn’t enough).
The other important thing to note is that in vocalist Robert Reynolds the band has a new singer more than capable of matching the great Larry Elkins, the power-throat behind Fierce Heart’s debut. If vocal names like Hagar and Meniketti get your juices flowing, you’ll find much to enjoy about Reynolds’ performances throughout the album.

This state of affairs is underlined when the band does a new version of ‘Out For Blood’ (from the first album) on this record; armed with a substantially beefier sound this time around, the come-and-have-a-go-if-you-think-yer-hard-enough nature of the lyrics is actually reinforced by the music, rather than undermined by a tinny drum machine… and need I mention that Carroll slots in another top-drawer solo?

Look, I’m not going to waste your time with a forensic comparison between 1985 and 2020… suffice to say that ‘War For The World’ has everything you need if you’re an aficionado of classic 80s melodic hard rock, from bruisers like ‘Just Got Lucky’ or the anthemic ‘Power to Rock’ to the more majestic and epic feel of the album’s best track, ‘Rest My Bones’, this record literally has it all.
Break out the pastel-shaded dustcoats – it’s time to rock!

01 – Into the Sun
02 – Built for Speed
03 – Out for Blood
04 – Just Got Lucky
05 – Lost Inside Your Love
06 – Power to Rock
07 – Bad Child
08 – Rest My Bones
09 – Long Time
10 – War for the World
11 – Road to Nowhere

Robert Reynolds – vocals
Rex Carroll – guitars
Nick Forchione – drums
Antonio Acevedo – bass

PRE Order:
www.amazon.co.uk/War-World-Fierce-Heart/dp/B08CWD4TT4