To Kill A King - The Spiritual Dark Age
“Found the devil in my own back yard, turns out he looks like everyone.” No other band does dark poetry quite like To Kill A King. Often seen as a Bastille 2.0 (they even supported them on tour), TKAK has always tested the limits of the indie rock genre, a genre normally very good at boxing itself in and then suffocating on its own success. With The Spiritual Dark Age they cement their talent for sinking their teeth into unconventional subject matter, with anti-romance track ‘No More Love Songs’ and a tirade against corrupt televangelists in ‘The Unspeakable Crimes of Peter Popoff’.
Ralph Pelleymounter’s mournful voice (which somehow manages to be both soft as silk and harsh as gravel) ducks and dives through songs that are bolder, brasher and largely unpredictable in a semi-convincing departure from his old country folk style and move towards find his footing in more heavy-weight rock.
Following his previous albums Cannibals with Cutlery and the less imaginatively titled follow-up To Kill A King, this isn’t just a change in style for Pelleymounter, but a transformation in mood and attitude that deserves credit for breaking the mould but ends up being massively inconsistent as a result.
With its first three songs, The Spiritual Dark Age shoots full speed ahead with nitrous in its fuel tank, but the album climaxes prematurely. Most of the heavy-hitters appear in the first half and from there, the rest of the album wends its weary way into the unremarkable. There are true gems amongst the glass imitations, but whilst TKAK’s first records were concrete in what they wanted to say and do, this album feels like the puberty transformation of their career which, following the exit of several band members and their shift in genre spawns just as much mediocrity as it does awesomeness. Either way, they are on course to creating something unique and show promise of greatness in the coming years.
6/10
