Single Slam – Big City Dream by Brother Firetribe (Sunbound)

Brother Firetribe have released a new single, called Big City Dream. Big City Dream will feature on their soon to be released album, Sunbound. Sunbound is due out on the 24th of March via Universal/Spinefarm Records).

Brother Firetribe are not a band I have heard anything of before. In fact I don’t even vaguely recognise the name and we here at GBHBL pride ourselves on knowing some pretty obscure bands.. Upon looking into the band I find that they are actually a side project, well kind of a side project. Their lead guitarist is Emppu Vuorinen who also happens to be the lead guitarist in Nightwish. A job that keep’s him understandably very busy. As such, Brother Firetribe release music very slowly and tour even slower and that may explain why I don’t know them. Since 2002, when they formed, they have released just 3 albums before Sunbound.

Looking further and I read that Brother Firetribe are labelled as being from a genre called Tennis Heavy. The band actually state that themselves on their Facebook page. I won’t lie, I have never heard of it and never want to again. Enough with the silly genres already. Away from that nonsense, the band are actually also more sensibly classified as Adult Orientated rock. That I can just about deal with.

Alongside Emppu Vuorinen, the band is made up of Pekka Heino (Leverage) on vocals and Jason Flinck who adds backing vocals and plays the bass. Tomppa Nikulainen looks after the keys and Hannes Pirila is on the drums.

Big City Dream is just over 4 minutes long and is a big helping of extremely cheesy, 80’s styled rock music. It is packed full of flamboyant keys, a gentle drum beat and big sounding guitar lines. Parts sound reminiscent of early Van Halen, Europe or even Journey (in style only). It actually keeps reminding me of Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer as well, weirdly enough. Pekka has a good voice and sounds legitimately 80s. Big City Dream has a big keyboard intro, think Jump or The Final Countdown in regards to style, not necessarily quality. There is a softly sung verse which keeps a gentle key effect running in the background and has a soft bass line at the foreground.

The choruses are catchy enough, as they have to be for this style of music. Backing vocals are good and there is a cool but short, big sounding guitar solo from Emppu. Carrying on it’s attempt to be as stereotypical a song as possible, the solo ends into a section of vocals over slowly thumped drums. It then jumps back into the chorus on repeat for a few bars before ending.

Big City Dream doesn’t sound like a modern song styled to be 80’s like, it actually sounds like it was written and produced in that time. It is an okay track, the sort of song that will go down well at a party or gig. This isn’t really the sort of music I would listen too much through my headphones and if I wanted a big sounding 80’s track, I would probably just play one from the many classics that exist.

It is a weird song to judge actually. Big City Dream is so unadventurous and so 80’s by numbers that I want to say it isn’t daring enough. I guess I should give them some leeway for not being creative as they strived for that authentic sound. In that they succeeded. For me though, while it is a song that I can enjoy once or twice even in that era this wouldn’t have been a huge hit. It’s okay but would have been swallowed up by much better songs.

Still, in the present, it is a pleasant bit of nostalgia that many of you may want in your life.

Big City Dream is available on all the usual; streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify now. Sunbound can be preordered from here along with other merchandise. Check the band out on Facebook and Twitter for more information on them and their future releases.