Hauntingly Beautiful Eight Years On - King 810 La Petite Mort or a Conversation With God

Its crazy to believe that King 810's second album is eight years old, but it is!

I very distinctively remember when this album dropped back in 2016, being a baby faced seventeen year old, attending college and working an horrifically dull part time job that didn't pay very well. I decided to bunk off from extra curriculum maths class that I always had to attend, because I was classed as thick. Fuck education right?

I Snatched the album from HMV, plonked my arse on the bus home which felt like eternity due to horrendous traffic we get in Bristol and reveled over the minimalist artwork.

I love the approach towards having everything stripped back nothing flashy or exaggerated. The embossed K sticking right out on the cover nothing else just lets the music speak for the bands image. I had only listened to the single "I ain't going back again" which was very different in style, but nothing I'm not used to with King as they were never afraid to experiment especially on their first record Memoirs of Murderer.

As soon as I popped the CD in my player, La Petite Mort instantly blew me away.

The title track Heavy Lies The Crown feels like the band beating my senselessly over the head with a 2x4 which is what I expect with my heavy music.

In fact sod it, I love this album, in fact. Its up there as one of my favorite albums ever alongside Slipknot's Iowa and Korn's Life is Peachy.

I love the rest of King's discography, their recent fifth outing "Follow My Tears" is very different but has hints to their first album and earlier demos.

But LPTM is definitely one of their best in my humble opinions.

The whole band is firing off on all cylinders on this, David Gunn's screams and lyricism are some of his best yet.

Andrew Workman Drums feel like a smack in the mouth, Andrew Beale's guitar work is amazing and Eugene Gills Bass is loud and thick.

I will do my best to articulate how I feel about this album but sorry if I get things muddled as its simply just that good.

It takes everything that Memoirs did but expanded on the different music styles into a more cohesive experience. Taking elements of Spoken word, Blues, Jazz, Hip-hop and of course Metal.

Every track is different and unique. Its one of those albums that you need to listen to in one go, with a nice pair of headphones sat in the dark. It will give you goosebumps.

Sadly when LPM was released it didn't get a whole lot of buzz from what I can remember. I think its down to a mixture of things.

Bare in mind, this was a newer band that did a massive tour supporting Slipknot and Korn.

No major music magazines apart from Metal Hammer touched this album, just small music blogs and websites who gave it a fair review.

Dom Lawson from Metal Hammer credited this album as "a masterpiece of work" in his video reviews Dom's Iron Sandwich. And I can honestly agree with him on that.

But also I think this was also down to their image and stubborn attitude in the music business, not that I'm complaining, I fucking love it when a band or artist sticks to their guns and doesn't conform to the trends and cringe of music such as every band attempting to sound as loud and as heavy as possible without hardly any substance. King being from Flint Michigan, shrouded them in this mystery that these lads are dangerous, and it put peoples backs up against a wall, and they didn't know how to take it.

Ignore the idiots who slag this band off, they are mega talented and La Petite Mort is a beautiful sounding album that is intelligent, sombre, honest and powerfully poignant. There's a lot of working parts that is incredibly dense and tells a story of struggle, pain and traumatic destruction that lives on as a timeless album that can be dissected and decoded to its core and still be able to find something new about it.

Give it a listen. Its unforgettable

Gabriel Hughes 28/02/2024