From South American Hell –Medellin,Colombia– emerge the weirdly named quartet called King. Weird may not be the right word, but it’s the first that comes to mind. Adding the bizarre to the weirdo is the fact that they play an extreme blend of blackened death metal rather than cheesy spendex-wielding power-metal as the name might suggest. Adding cheese to the cheese-cake is the peculiar booklet, covered in what looks like awful CGI, Photoshop galore. Filled with ripped t-shirts and flashy flames, it’s hard to take the band-photos seriously – instead I find myself cracking up the angry reversed-U visages and adolescent posery with swords and bats. It is, in fact, so ridiculous that before sliding in the CD I’m already half convinced that it might be a joke-band.  Oh dear.

So whilst completely lacking in a sense of style, this lot take their music rather more seriously.  They are also signed to the prolific Deathgasm label, so the music itself should kick ass really.

Anyways, as much as I wanted to like this, I cannot but conclude that this is essentially generic death/black metal. In the music itself, I can’t hear any of theMedellinspirit, instead Behemoth, Dying Fetus, Krisiun and Deicide spring to mind. There are glimpses of Demilich and grind influences from time to time, but it just ain’t enough.

The song-writing is solid, but there’s some major misjudgements like the awful repetitive chorus of ‘No pray, No mercy’, is completely unbearable. There’s also a song called ‘Kill the posers like Christians’, which I guess is a fun title, but given they’re massive posers themselves (in the posing for photos way) it’s highly ironic. The album is basically a succession of countless misjudgements like this, and it feels pretty brain dead (in a bad way) to be honest.

There isn’t much to say about this record that hasn’t been said before about thousands of black/death records. You will know exactly what it all sounds like once you heard one song. There ain’t any variation, just glimpses of brilliance in form of stand-alone riffs, never combined particularly subtly into songs. I’m sure if they had have come up with a more exciting album, I’d have more to say. Alas, this is not so.

(Miika Virtanen, 4/10)

http://www.facebook.com/KINGSATHAN