Originally Posted by
binnie
King 810 – Memoirs of A Murderer (2014)
I am normally highly suspicious of hype, and few bands in the past 10 years have received more hype than King 810. Hailing from the darkened streets of Flint, Michigan, this bunch of tough-guys know what it’s like to see the dark side of urban decline and poverty – they, we are told, bring a much needed grittiness to the metal scene. They – to borrow urban parlance – are ‘real’. Excuse me while I stroke my chin.
Not that ‘Memoirs….’ isn’t a good debut record – it is a very good debut record – but I’m not sure it needs the hype (or the overbearing spoken interludes from vocalist David Guin telling us how badass his life is) to sell it. Musically, King 810 are incredibly inventive. Is it metal? Not necessarily be conventional standards: not all of the songs feature heavy guitars, there’s certainly no nod to conventional sub-genres (Death, Thrash, metalcore), and much of what is here is not even riff-driven. Indeed, King 810 owe as much to punk, country and goth as they do Iron Maiden or Black Sabbath. And in that sense, ‘Memoirs…’ is incredibly refreshing. Honest, even. But lyrically – whilst certainly unconventional – the themes quickly become tired: guns, knives, gangs, urban neglect and the suffocation that comes with it. ‘Write what you know…’ they say – but you have to wonder how much of this is contrived. That sense of doubt leaves the record feeling ever so slightly incomplete.
It’s hard not to be impressed, however. Opener ‘Killem All’ sounds like early Slipknot: intense, abrasive and channelling the vital eeriness of Nu Metal to highly effective ends. ‘Best Nite Of My Life’ welds hardcore to some brutal bottom-end and comes on with a psychotic intensity. Elsewhere, the acoustic ‘Take It’ is highly affective, and approaches the claustrophobic grandeur of Nick Cave, with the harrowing ‘Devil Don’t Cry’ trumping it as an exercise in the macabre. Few bands could switch styles so comfortably and still make the results feel like a complete record. Are all of the 16 songs here A+? No – but the whole is far, far more than the sum of its parts, and only an absolute cretin would doubt that King 810 have made one of the most refreshing debut records in a decade.
But are they worthy of the hype surrounding them? Only time will tell. There are moments here where the violence of Flint appears to be glorified rather than chronicled. That’s not to say that ‘Memoirs….’ engages in cheap thrills (it is a harrowing piece of music), but you do wonder if the subject of over-bearing violence might have been treated with far, far greater sensitivity. Had that been the case, King 810 might have produced an album that was provocative rather than just provoking.