 
With all the swagger of a brawling drunk Fights
and Fires come bursting onto the scene with their
debut album Proof That Ghosts Exist. They play
fast, hard, and only a little inadequately.
Lyrically Fights and Fires are poignant and the
whiny pleading speech on the final track: “my
old man once said these better dreams are dead
my son” is heart-felt and well suited to
Phil Cox’s vocals. This jilted spoken singing
style works brilliantly for the band and is reminiscent
of Every Time I Die, but sadly Cox doesn’t
have the prowess of a singer like Keith Buckley
and the songs are deflated by his overly croaky
shouting. ‘You Can’t Say Slags On
The Radio’ starts off great and ends great,
but in the middle you just want to scream at them
to do it properly. ‘Shake It’ hints
at what they are capable of; it’s a radio
friendly punk number with sex appeal “shake
it, shake it, shake it from the hips,” you
can imagine this creating chaos at live shows,
now they just have to maintain this ballsy appetite.
Fights And Fires though are full on and in your
face from the moment this album starts to the
moment it ends. The songs are tight and cohesive;
this is one band that truly plays as a unit. Cleanly
Picked guitar is a thrilling substitute and unique
addition to the chugging thrashy sounds we are
used to from the hard-core scene and guitarist
Ryan Price’s playing confidently flips between
the two.
Proof That Ghosts Exists is a band finding their
feet and as such it’s hard to be distinctly
negative or positive about them. It isn’t
fence sitting merely indecision about a band that
has a very indecisive sound. On ‘Dirty Mouth’
they flash you with minor moments of melody and
it could progress into something beautiful, but
they never dig deeper instead they regress into
a-typical hard-core. ‘Death Adder’
uses interesting bass lines and riffs over a loud,
quiet, loud drum beat and with a definite chorus
“we’re not the only sons to spend
time on the open road…” this song
could easily become the bands anthem.
Buried underneath a fierce somewhat empty hard-core
exterior Fights And Fires have interesting clever
depths just waiting to be exploited and when they
realise their potential they could create something
truly unique, until then they are stuck in a minefield
of mediocre punk bands struggling to find their
sound.
3/5
Review by Lauren Mullineaux
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