ALBUM REVIEW: King Of A Dead World – Battalions
It is hard to see how we are going to squeeze 500 words out of this review of King Of A Dead World by BATTALIONS when you could realistically sum it up in one: riffs. You’ll find them in all shapes and sizes across this half an hour – bluesy ones, groovy ones, absolutely absurdly massive ones – and no doubt if you’re on a site like this that will suit you just fine. After all, isn’t that where all this came from? Tonny Iommi, Jimmy Page and the like pulling them out of nowhere to birth a movement which has grown ever stronger for over half a century now. Bands have sped them up, slowed them down, chopped them in half and turned them inside out, but without riffs it’s safe to say there probably wouldn’t even be a Distorted Sound.
Hailing from Kingston-Upon-Hull and formed in 2010, BATTALIONS stick pretty close to the blueprint laid out by Iommi and co. here. Although described as a return to their roots, it isn’t entirely clear how far from these roots the band have ever really strayed. King Of A Dead World doesn’t feel like a huge departure from the heavily SABBATH-indebted fare of its 2018 predecessor Forever Marching Backwards, or the 2020 remaster of their first two records, but the band are certainly back bigger and beefier than ever thanks to a very sensible team up with producer Joe Clayton (PIJN, MASTIFF, TUSKAR). This record sounds huge in Clayton’s steady hands, with BATTALIONS’ monolithic grooves hitting with the kind of power they’ve been deserving of since day one.
Beyond the riffs, the other real draw here is vocalist Phil Wilkinson. The frontman boasts a twisted, hawkish bark that goes a fair way to moving this on from straight SABBATH-worship and into some of the less forgiving territories occupied by the likes of CROWBAR and GRIEF (now COME TO GRIEF). It provides a suitable vehicle for the album’s themes, which explore the decline of humanity and destruction of our world’s resources under leaders who couldn’t seem to care less. The album title itself refers to an article which posed the question, ‘who wants to be the king of a dead world anyway?’, and as Wilkinson barks and howls his way across the record’s never-ending procession of hard-hitting riffs it is easy enough to pick up on the urgency and fury of the matter even when the lyrics themselves aren’t always that intelligible.
The main downside here however is that King Of A Dead World is a little too easy to suss out. It really does seem to do just one thing: riffy ragers with barky vocals. That’s not a bad thing at all, certainly not in the case of a track like No Safe Place which sounds a bit like CLUTCH being fronted by some kind of wailing banshee, but even with the band’s consistently high standards of execution listeners are likely to find themselves wanting something just a little different as the album wears on.
Then again, at just a touch over 30 minutes, it’s not as though King Of A Dead World is too much of a slog. It runs by easily enough, and at the risk of repeating ourselves it really is impossible to fault the riffs on offer here, but in a world of plenty of essential sludge releases, this one feels more like it lands on the ‘genre fans only’ list.
Rating: 6/10
King Of A Dead World is set for release on October 21st via APF Records.
Like BATTALIONS on Facebook.