If proof were ever need that art imitates life, that heavy times create heavy music, you need look no further than Cardiff bruisers King Kraken. Since their formation in 2018, this quintet have been providing the perfect soundtrack to a world hurtling towards annihilation. Yet, there’s also a timeless quality to the band’s brand of stoner/heavy metal that is impervious to fads and trends and their sophomore album sounds as if it could have been released at any point over the past forty years. March Of The Gods is an album which finds the band comfortable within their own sound and is another sure step towards global domination.
Attesting to a sense of drive and purpose, King Kraken arrive like a shot from a pistol with opening cut ‘Scream’. With wrecking ball swing, the band throw their (considerable) weight around, barrelling from speaker to speaker and scrawling their sound on every available surface. It’s pretty awe-inspiring stuff and bears down upon the listener like the weight of an ocean upon a shipwreck. Returning producer Romesh Dodangoda really understands this band and has given them a dynamic sound that’s hefty no matter whether the band put the pedal-to-the-metal (‘El Giganto’) or slow down for the skull-crushing ‘Berzerker’. If there’s one thing that unites the ten tracks which comprise this album, then it’s a level of heaviness of which it strives (and more often than not, attains). However, there’s plenty of light to contrast the band’s shade, a mirror held to dark to make the heavier sections seem all the more heavy. Case in point being ‘Hero’, a blues-based number that inserts plenty of white space, deriving much of its power from a less-is-more ethos, yet it can more than hold its own with the piledriver that is the following ‘Vigilante’.
With the same line-up since the band’s inception, King Kraken share an obvious chemistry and it’s obviously an aid to creating that feeling of enormity. With guitarists Adam Healey and Pete Rose firing off each other (check out their stellar work on ‘Preacher’) and bassist Karl Meyer and drummer Richard Lee Mears surprising nimble and fleet of foot, there’s a certain danger emanating from these grooves that suggests you don’t get too close. It’s a sensation heightened by vocalist Mark Donoghue whose whiskey-croak adds just the right amount of menace, and when all rolled into one, these constituent parts create a sound that could quite easily trade blows with Sabbath (and possibly win).
After making waves with their debut album (2023’s MCLXXX), March Of The Gods is going to turn 2025 into a tsunami.
- March Of The Gods is self-released on 18th April 2025 (available here).
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Track List:
1. Scream
2. El Giganto
3. Berzerker
4. March of the Gods
5. Hero
6. Vigilante
7. Preacher
8. Magnum Opus
9. Chainsaw Saviour
10. Under the Sun
