BOWMEN

track-list:
Demons
Said Or Done
Diggin’ In The Dirt
Fight The Tide
Hold Me Now
Broken Man
Still Got My Time
Memories
Palace Of The King
Rocket Man
Black Angel
Hold Me Now (Acoustic Version)

BOWMEN are:
Markus Escher – vocals
Jan Wendel – guitar
Stefan Pfaffinger – bass
Christian ‘Tilly’ Klaus – drums

On their third long player after ‘Play Some Rawk’ from 2020, the German rock band BOWMEN once again delivers an extremely exciting compilation of new songs that seems to defy any category but is pleasantly familiar and extremely catchy.
The album with the title ‘Mission IV’ impresses with a very unique mix of grunge and bluesy hard rock, as Classic Rock Magazine declared with its predecessor with the stylistic classification between ‘Alice In Chains’ and ‘The Brew’.
The eleven new songs (as well as an acoustic version of the ballad ‘Hold Me Now’ as a bonus track) take the listener on a trip in which every song seems to be part of a musical journey through time, which never comes across as dusty though, but rather modern and homogeneous and above all conveys a lot of fun with the music.
LED ZEPPELIN is quoted easily (‘Fight The Tide’), emotionally charged ballads are performed (‘Hold Me Now’, ‘Memories’) and melodic grooving alternative/grunge rock is celebrated (‘Rocket Man’, ‘Demons’), before the album’s regular eleven songs come to an epic conclusion with ‘Black Angel’.
‘Mission IV’ is certainly no fast-food rock music that can be labelled as cliché immediately after listening to the first song.
The album has groove, soul, catchiness, conveys an enormous joy of playing and grows on you with every listen.
And that is exactly how it should be.
With BOWMEN, grunge meets bluesy hard rock, somewhere between ‘Alice in Chains’ and ‘The Brew’ (Classic Rock Magazine, Issue 6/2020).
In 2015, three music enthusiasts came together to celebrate energetic ‘handmade rock music’, free from clichés and mainstream:
the trademark of BOWMEN.
This is impressively demonstrated on the two albums:
Mission 27°59’17“N 86°55’31“E (2016)
Play Some Rawk (2020)
The third album by these men of conviction will be released in June 2024.
But BOWMEN are more than just studio recordings.
Live performance is what is important to Bowmen who have been joined by a second guitar since 2022.
The stage is their personal therapy space, where they can fully unfold.
Professional critics agree:
Stefan Pfaffinger on bass and Christian ‘Tilly’ Klaus on drums are a powerful duo on stage.
With their decades of experience, they bring a tremendous amount of energy with them;
their performance can only be described as ‘tight’.
Markus Escher impresses with soulfully intoned lyrics and his charismatic stage presence, while Jan Wendel provides additional pressure on the guitar parts.