Heroes of the Kingdom – HOTK
Photo courtesy of http://www.davidjcubberly.com/
Not long after Chris Powell and his band Ring, Cicada released their much anticipated second album History’s End digitally; he followed that with self-releasing the debut album from his other band Heroes of the Kingdom through the very same method. While physical copies of either album would certainly be my preferred choice, I can’t help but be a bit ecstatic about the amount of material released all within the same period, especially after Ring, Cicada remained mostly dormant for an extended period of time. Anyway, I certainly wasn’t expecting an album from Heroes of the Kingdom, as I hadn’t even heard talk of a release or really much in the way of recording an album, but then low and behold a link shows up on their MySpace and there it is. There in lies the benefits of the digital age, that said…a nice large slab of wax with these songs on it would still be very awesome. Regardless, I am a happy camper with this and HOTK delivers in much of the way I’d hoped. I swear I must have listened to the “Instrumental” track on their MySpace dozens of times before the release of the album and the rest of the tracks that I hadn’t heard before stand up just as well.
Heroes of the Kingdom appear to be more of a traditional rock band for Powell, in that the music is not heavily instrumental like in Ring, Cicada and puts Powell’s vocals to work far more. They end up fitting quite nicely with what the band is doing, especially on some of the slower numbers that are definitely cool to hear. HOTK is a lot less jammy too, and like most Midwestern influenced rock it has an added focus melodically. While HOTK was definitely anticipated at some point, it came as wonderful surprise for me this year. Also with the addition of ex-Riddle of Steel bassist Jimmy Vavak to the bands lineup not too long ago, I hope there is much more to be heard from this band.
Heroes of the Kingdom – Wild Eyed Creatures [MP3]
For those interested in picking up HOTK, it can be had digitally through Bandcamp in just about every format you could possibly want. So give it a go if you dig what you hear.
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