Posted on: May 18, 2011 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

New Orleans’ blackened blues-metallers Blackfire Revelation finally
release their long-delayed, self-titled debut full length this July on
their Southern Reconstruction label.

Blackfire Revelation was founded by J.R. Fields in the summer of 2002.
Fields was in film school at the University of New Orleans at the time and
growing increasingly disinterested in both college and the film industry.
Later that year, his grandfather, a farmer and Baptist deacon from
Mississippi, passed away and left him an inheritance of $5000 dollars. He
used the money “wisely” and dropped out of college, bought two half
stacks, a drum set, and rented a rehearsal space. He put the word out to
friends that he was looking for a drummer and soon met drummer R.K. ‘Hank’
Haney through a former classmate. The duo began rehearsing and was soon
gigging around New Orleans and throughout the southeast. In July of 2004,
the band entered producer Jerry Teel’s Funhouse South studio in New
Orleans to record their debut recording “Gold and Guns on 51. ”

Touring followed and they soon caught the attention of Fat Possum Records.
Gold and Guns on 51 was licensed to Fat Possum through Fields’ own
Southern Reconstruction label and was released nationally in March of
2005. Following its release, the band toured extensively throughout the
United States both on their own and as the opener for New York noise-rock
legends Unsane on their ‘Blood Run’ tour. While on the road supporting
the record in August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans leaving
the future of the band and its hometown uncertain. Unable to return home
BFR would spend the next several months picking up gigs where they could
to earn cash and stay afloat and lived briefly in Atlanta, Memphis, and
Oxford, MS.

In October, Fields returned to New Orleans to begin picking up the pieces
and to write the next BFR record. Haney relocated to Memphis until January
2006. Upon Haney’s return, the band enlisted producer Grant Curry and
booked time at his Fugitive Sound studio in Ponchatoula, LA.

The result of these sessions became the self-titled Blackfire Revelation
record. When the tracking of the record was completed in March, the band
left for a month-long European tour again in support of Unsane. Upon their
return, the record was mixed, mastered and completed.

However, after a handful of dates around the U.S. that summer, Fields put
the band on indefinite hiatus and the record was shelved. Five years
later, the album will finally see the light of day with Southern
Reconstruction set to release it on July 5, 2011. The label will also be
re-releasing Gold and Guns on 51 on the same day and for the first time
the bands entire catalog will be available for download via iTunes and
other online retailers. Though there are no immediate plans to record or
perform Fields remains intent that the Blackfire Revelation is not over
and refers to his absence from music as merely a “pro-longed sabbatical.”

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