Review: King Bastard ‘From Whence They Came’
New York four-piece King Bastard made a splash two years ago with their independently released debut album It Came From The Void. Scaling the upper reaches of the Doom Charts and bagging features in the likes of Blabbermouth, on the epic six-track space odyssey, themed around a doomed mission to explore another planet, they channelled H.P Lovecraft in an excursion of gritty sci-fi horror that encompassed sludgy doom, psychedelic instrumentalisation and experimental jams with the lofty ambitions of ‘terraforming a new sonic landscape’.
Wrapping the largely instrumental tale, sprinkled with samples including the tense exchange between Ellen Ripley and Carter Burke about the betrayal of the colonists of LV-426 from James Cameron’s Aliens, in a smothering blanket of powerful riffs, fuzzed-out grooves that owed a debt to the likes of Saint Vitus and Kyuss and the hard-hitting visceral stylings of High On Fire, It Came From The Void was an ambitious statement that may not have achieved the lofty heights they were attempting, but as the saying goes ‘if you aim for the moon, even if miss, you’ll land amongst the stars’.
Two years on from their debut, the band has toured extensively, sharing the stage with acts such as Chained To The Bottom Of The Ocean and Restless Spirit, sharpening their craft and adding to their sound. As a result, the follow-up, From Whence They Came, sees the band expanding on their foundations with four tracks where they have turned the dial up to overdrive in all areas.
Thematically switching from space to time, King Bastard tuned down to drop-F and introduced varying percussion instruments and styles to broaden their heady mix of face-melting doom. Recorded and engineered by Colin Marston (Gorguts) and Mike Verni at Menegroth Studio in Queens, NY with Marston handling the mixing, the ambition with this sophomore release is clearly to up the ante and ride the momentum grabbed from their last outing.
Opening with bird song and what sounds like wooden wind chimes clanking, Knuckle Dragger grows from low bongo rhythms and tribal chanting. Behind this rasping, guttural utterances from bassist and vocalist Arthur Erb signal the growing unease that rises until the band let go into the sludgy, cavernous riff-fest that was expected. As the building whine of the FX gives way to pounding, low reverberations, the guitar stalls with screeching feedback and drummer Matt Ryan attacks the kit like a lumbering sauropod stomping through a swamp. Droning echoes and winding clean notes combine to bring light and shade to the occasion, Erb’s vocals are barely decipherable under the cacophony as the powerful track picks up speed toward the end with thunderous double bass.
This sonic departure mirrors the thematic chronicling of time, rather than gothic space horror with the first number mirroring the Cro-Magnon march of early man as a knuckle-dragging ape. Second number, The Invisible Landscape starts with more FX and a scattering of noises as the creeping guitar and tentative percussion hits create an atmosphere of progress. The sampled voice and spacey meandering instrumental shows this progression and harks back to the material from their debut. Returning to the psychedelic musings they harnessed on It Came From The Void, this four-minute piece feels like a far-out and relaxing interlude.
Despite featuring riffs as solid as granite, it works through stages of intensity and considered astral navel-gazing…
Astral Psyche for me might just be the pick of the bunch as the gloriously murky tones of Erb’s bass gently teases and plods under the searching synths and the dexterous guitar work of Mike Verni. Here King Bastard take their time and build from the muted beginnings to a towering, progressive journey reminiscent of the high points they hit the first time around. Despite featuring riffs as solid as granite, it works through stages of intensity and considered astral navel-gazing. Reintroducing the bird song and wind chimes from the previous track gives the journey a circular feel and creates a continuity between the savagery and the divine.
The final track, The Dawn Of Man, follows the ominous samples that conclude the previous track and after the teasing grind of the introduction, pummels the listener with more low and slow fuzzy riffs and growls. Featuring more vocals and a chugging faster passage that hits with the impact of a game of dodgeball using bowling balls, so it is a welcome relief when the spacey, ethereal guitar elevates the barrage into a more dream-like haze. This thick, heavy soup feels like they are trying to weld the more progressive nature of their songwriting to Conan’s fury and lumbering downtuned ferocity.
As the track climaxes with a swirling jam over the stately thump of the rhythm section, it is a dramatic and huge-sounding payoff to the slow burn they have rafted over the twelve-minute run time.
Clocking in at just over half an hour, From Whence They Came makes for an interesting listen. The band are introducing new facets to their sound and attempting a shift in direction that retains their roots by simultaneously attempting to stride forward in their futuristic sonic vision and get back to the primitive. Objectively you can hear where they are trying to go and it feels like King Bastard are definitely onto something as when they lock in, like on Astral Psyche they produce some absolutely fantastic material.
Stylistically I think they have a little further to go before they hit the bullseye with their changing sound, but they are striving to strike out and carve their own identity. In the words of Jason Bateman’s Pepper Brooks from Dodgeball ‘It’s a bold strategy Cotton, let’s see if it pays off for ’em’.
Label: Independent
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram
Scribed by: Mark Hunt-Bryden
