- Genre: 'Rock'
- Release Date: '1st October 2021'
Our Rating:
King of the Dead seem keen to promote just how mysterious, enigmatic, and intriguing they are. Fronted by a mask-wearing individual who goes by the moniker The Familiar (yeah, not the same kind of mask everyone’s been wearing in the supermarket the last year or so), we learn of how the trio use their music to tell a story, and have done so with a succession of singles, starting with ‘Control’, followed by ‘Destroy My Name’, and ‘Running out of Time’. It so happens that these are the first three songs on this, their debut EP, and appear in the same order. The final single in the quartet, ‘With Love’ has now been released ahead of the EP, leaving just track four, ‘Damned’ previously unreleased.
As punk-flavoured hard rock goes, King of the Dead are solid enough, and in citing 30 Seconds to Mars, Ghost, and Alkaline Trio, they give a fair summary of their sound – and apart from some vintage horror organ swirling around in the background, there’s not a lot to indicate their darker side sonically, where they go for big anthemic choruses. It’s well played, and the dominant bass is really solid – nothing fancy, just really meaty. Lyrically, there are calls to ‘wake up!’ and lots of ‘woooah-hooooah’ backing vocals, but nothing particularly unusual or unsettling. It’s accessible, solid, and assured, but far from menacing.
