ALBUM REVIEW: Fury And Death – King
If melodic blackened death metal needed a torchbearer, then Australia’s KING stoke the fire on Fury And Death. Much like THULCANDRA’s Hail The Abyss, Fury And Death marries IMMORTAL’s icy intensity with the fiery fretwork that melodic death metal dishes out on the daily, crafting entire quest lines through the caverns of your eardrums.
Instrumental prelude Mist gently strums away like a bard in a tavern before opener proper Perception Ignited swaps its predecessor’s cinematic scene-setting for swishing sword solos shrouded in dissonance, like the four horsemen of the apocalypse riding through the mist. Vocalist Tony Forde’s growl lingers deep within the mix’s forest, like wolves howling away in the distance, as bassist Tim Anderson, drummer David Haley and guitarist Dave Hill paint grandiose soundscapes that collide with walls of blackened noise.
From there on in, Fury And Death is an avalanche of melodic blackened death metal done masterfully. Volcano’s foot-stomping groove grinds over Forde’s guttural growls as a tribal chorus of ‘woah-oh’s ride a wave of dissonant chords; Black Dimension’s urgency is as unrelenting as a battering ram, nodding to the raw meat intensity of black metal’s Nordic second-wave whilst applying a coat of melodic polish to it; whilst Into The Fire does just that, throwing you face-first into a molten pit of blast-beats.
Whilst much of KING’s sound twists and turns throughout Fury And Death, like a child playing with playdough, every inch of its 42-minute runtime has one thing in common: it leaves you feeling euphoric, empowered, and excited. Hill and Forde’s songwriting partnership is one of contagious chemistry, crafting entire worlds that you can either spend hours exploring or simply air-play your way into oblivion with.
It’s hard to find fault in Fury And Death. Sure, there’s scope to suggest that closing duo Crepuscular and To The Stars forgo the pace for more run-of-the-mill adventuring, yet their expansive melodies and hammering blasts surpass the quality of their peers. And in early highlight Mountain Of Ice, they just might hold the formula for the perfect black metal banger; sustained riffs echo out effervescently, before blizzards of blast-beats bombard you as Forde howls out the titular line into the void, before giving way to power chords, sweeping melodies, and sections that simply deserve to be air-played to.
As black metal continues to split itself into two camps – one singing the songs of satan, others singing the songs of protest – Fury And Death reminds us that the genre can simply be one that’s bloody fun to listen to, like escaping into a world of never-ending stories. If you’re not keeping your eye on KING, you should be.
Rating: 9/10
Fury And Death is set for release on November 17th via Soulseller Records.
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