The Bug - Fire (2LP) - Red/Yellow Vinyl

Kevin Martin has spent decades refining a particular kind of dread, and Fire is the moment it billows into a full blaze. Released on August 27, 2021 through Ninja Tune, it is the first solo The Bug album since Angels & Devils in 2014, and it feels like a direct, scorched-earth follow-up to London Zoo’s system-ruining intensity. The palette is familiar, sub-bass and grit, dancehall, grime and dub pressure, but the focus is razor sharp. Where Angels & Devils had a split personality, Fire locks into one mood and refuses to flinch.

The cast is lean and lethal. Flowdan returns as the essential voice in The Bug’s universe, still that calm in the storm who sounds like he could walk through a burning building without breaking stride. “Pressure” is the mission statement, a lumbering rhythm built for a wall of speakers, with Flowdan rolling out threats and warnings like public service announcements for the end times. Logan brings a different energy, all serrated consonants and needlepoint attack. “Clash” is exactly that, a collision of voice and rhythm with no safe corners. Then there is Nazamba, whose baritone was practically built for The Bug’s ash-cloud rhythms. “War” is devastating, a dub-poet dispatch, the kind of track that feels like you can see the heat shimmer above the pavement. Moor Mother steps into this world like she has always lived there, turning “Vexed” into a tense, coiled monologue that doubles as a thesis statement for the record’s sense of urgency.

What carries Fire, beyond the names, is how Martin sculpts space. The kicks do not just punch, they drag the air with them, and the synths smear like burning rubber. He understands the physics of sound systems and uses it like a narrative tool. Even on headphones, you get that sense of architecture, of pressure rising and vents opening at the exact millisecond. It is why The Bug vinyl has a reputation among bass heads, and why Fire vinyl is the version to hunt if you want the room to shake in the right ways. The quiet parts feel like someone taking their hand off your throat for a breath. The loud parts are tidal.

The record landed to a wave of praise from places that matter for this kind of music. Critics at outlets like Pitchfork, The Guardian, and The Quietus singled out its coherence and ferocity, a return to an MC-driven format that still finds new shadows. That matters because repetition can flatten heavy music, and Fire avoids that trap. The tempos shift just enough, the voices rotate, the synth timbres change tone like warning lights switching from amber to red. You can drop the needle almost anywhere and know you are in The Bug’s world, yet each track carves its own scar.

There is a social Undertow here that is not just scenery. In interviews around release, Martin pointed to the churn of the late 2010s and the claustrophobia of isolation as fuel. You can hear that on “War,” but also in the way “Clash” never quite resolves, or how “Pressure” seems to tighten by the bar. Fire is not reportage, it is response. That difference gives it staying power, the sense that these songs will still hit years from now because they capture a mood rather than a headline.

If you collect The Bug albums on vinyl, this sits right next to London Zoo as a cornerstone, less scattershot than Angels & Devils, more feral than the collaborative detours of the past decade. The sequencing encourages full playthrough too, that classic start-to-finish surge that makes flipping the record feel like taking a lap between rounds. If you stumble across a copy at a Melbourne record store, do not think too hard. If you buy The Bug records online, make sure your turntable setup is ready for sub frequencies that will test the furniture. For anyone browsing vinyl records Australia wide and looking for something that feels alive in the room, this is a strong recommendation.

Fire is not here to convert skeptics. It is here to be exactly what The Bug does at peak form, a furnace blast of rhythm and voice that turns bass into atmosphere. Turn it up, let the pressure build, and remember why these records matter on a physical format where you can feel the temperature rise.