Sunday 13 March 2016

The King Is Blind- Our Father


Artist: The King Is Blind
Album: Our Father
Record Label: Cacophonous
Release Date: 29th January 2016

If one listens to frontman Steve Tovey talk about the concept, ethos and building of UK super-quintet The King Is Blind’s debut album ‘Our Father’, his meticulous passion and understanding of the art his band is creating is as riveting as the record itself. Inspired somewhat by John Milton’s legendary tome Paradise Lost, ‘Our Father’, in Tovey’s words explores different ideas of Satan and; “it’s developing him as a literary character from a variety of sources, but predominantly Paradise Lost and the Book of Revelation, and his story from his genesis through the genesis of man to resurrection, to highlight that in us all is the instinct to commit the seven “sins””. 

Through a whirlwind 10-tracks that are loaded with deathly, blackened, instantaneously groovy and doom-laden presence, the intricate narrative unfolds adhering to Tovey’s assertion that the record is “not anti-Christian, not anti-religion and certainly not anti-faith”. His lyricism throughout is bleakly poetic, sitting somewhere between the nihilism of Lovecraft and the hallucinogenic spirituality of William Blake, but musically the quintet excel at creating a suitably bombastic backdrop. Whether it be filthy thrash ‘n’ roll (‘Genesis Refracted’), ten-tonne hammer chameleonic virtuosity (‘Mors Somnis’) or miserable atmosphere (‘Mourning Light’) all of it is delivered with a vitality and instantaneous chew-ability. 

9-minute closer ‘Mesmeric Furnace’ is maybe the best positioned to provide a summation of the record; grandiose, catchy and vast in sonic vision, though ‘Our Father’ most certainly has a formula, it very rarely ceases to be grimly exhilarating. 

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