★★★
Don’t go into King Of The North’s new album,Get Out Of Your World, expecting an exercise in musical banality and mindless frivolity.
Though the record starts relatively innocuously with a few stray shards of guitar, some disparate beats, a guttural voice and a ten-tonne LA rock riff in ‘Rise’, before long it transforms into a behemoth: a rocking, bluesy beast.
‘Ride Like You’re Free’ adds to the list of hard rock tracks celebrating the discourse of freedom with a swagger-soaked stadium soundtrack – and one of the better ones to boot – while ‘Down To The Devil’ is the latest station on Robert Johnson’s perennially inspiring trip to the gates of hell.
The journey to the top of ‘The Mountain’ is almost as impressive as the view from the top, ‘Caught Between Two Worlds’ is emotional conflict dressed to kill in double denim and ‘Hard Days Are Done’ is catharsis with a bottle of single malt and a Bon Scott sneer.
There’s more to come with the prisoner-free ‘No Stone Left Unturned’ and pop-but-not ‘Manic Depression’. Kings aren’t supposed to be benign rulers, and King Of The North ain’t no benign rock’n’roll band.
King Of The North’sGet Out Of Your Worldis an independent release available now at their website.
