Cacumen (1972–1986) In 1972 in the Bavarian town of
Ingolstadt the teenaged guitarist Hans Ziller, put together a rock band called Cacumen with his guitarist brother Karl and gathered a bunch of friends to complete the band. The name of the group was taken from a school test Hans had done and it translates from Latin as "the top of a mountain". For the next six years, the band played in small local venues, but formed a fan base in their hometown. In 1978, the group consisted of Hans and Karl on guitars, Horst Maier on guitar (in 1983, Maier's last name would become Maier-Thorn), Hans Hauptmann on bass and Hans Forstner on drums. When the band started searching for a replacement singer,
Claus Lessmann, a fellow student of Hans', was hired. Lessmann previously had performed in the bands Ginger and Sunset and was known for his harmonic vocals and he fit in perfectly with Cacumen. With this line-up, the band had a chance to start branching out to venues outside Ingolstadt. The band recorded a single in 1979 called "Riding Away", which featured the song "Wintertale" on the flip side. The group used this opportunity to begin touring in clubs, schools and even in parking lots. The fan base grew and Cacumen was finally signed to an independent label. By then though, Karl Ziller had departed the group. The self-titled
Cacumen album was released in 1981 and featured a new version of "Riding Away". Eventually Cacumen got in contact with Hanns Schmidt-Theissen, who owned a small music studio. Schmidt-Theissen had played with the group on the "Riding Away" single and was supporting the band at live venues on keyboards. Since money was poor and Schmidt-Theissen was willing to help, they recorded the album
Bad Widow at his studio in
Rodgau, Germany in 1982. Schmidt-Theissen helped the group to get a contract, and was successful at the time. Meanwhile, the fan base of the band was growing as was the number of performance dates. In 1983, Robert Prskalowicz replaced Hans Hauptmann on bass and this group became the best-known Cacumen formation, but when they signed with
BMG, the group had had a total make-over. Prskalowicz and Hans Forstner were no longer with the group as of March 1985. They departed because they could not commit to the group full-time and were replaced with
Joerg Deisinger on bass, previously from Rascal and Dynasty, while Dominik Hülshorst from Darxon became the new drummer. The band updated also their image, donning the standard look of an 80s hard rock group. Finally, the company requested a name change, as they found Cacumen was too hard for the average customer to pronounce and not a very marketable name. After a brain storming session, the new name selected was Bonfire, which came into effect in May 1986. had already published the news two days prior that this had happened with addition information that former
Accept and
Bangalore Choir vocalist
David Reece would be taking on the vocal duties and recording a new album with the group. The e-mail by Wrede went into further details of what had occurred. Lessmann and Chris Limburg no longer had the desire to continue and Uwe Köhler had also decided to leave the group and pursue a new course in music with another band. Ziller had wanted to carry on with Harry Reischmann (drums) and so hired Reece as well as Ronnie Parkes (Bass) from
Seven Witches These musicians for the year of 2014 were performing together as EZ Livin', a solo venture by Ziller while Bonfire had taken a break. The new second guitarist of Bonfire is Frank Pané, member of the German metal band
Solemnity and ex-member of Red to Grey, and Valley's Eve. In 2016, Bonfire celebrated their 30th anniversary and a new double album,
Pearls, released on UDR/Warner on 18 March 2016. This recording featured past band hits that were re-recorded. At the beginning of July it was announced that Reece and the band had mutually agreed to part ways. To fill in the vacancy Michael Bormann was announced as the new frontman, but he was not able to join the group for a few months. Alexx Stahl of Purple Rising and Roxxcalibur agreed to be a temporary singer to fulfill the band's commitments until Bormann's arrival. During that time the group agreed that Stahl put a lot of effort in to the performances, so it was agreed all around that he would become the full-time lead vocalist. Alexx said about the beginning of the cooperation: "I received a call in summer 2016. Bonfire was looking for a spare singer for the ongoing tour because David Reece was out. I saw that I could get some good promotion for me and my other bands there so I joined Bonfire for 16 shows. I had only 10 days to learn the whole live set but it worked." ==Members==