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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