There’s certainly a feeling going around that King 810 are the most hyped band at the moment, and here we have the culmination of all said hype. There is always a question with these bands at whether or not they’ll live up to the exposure, or whether or not they’ll fall into obscurity. The band have become synonymous with violent actions, and their live shows often fall into full on riots, therefore its quite apt to name the new album ‘Memoirs of a Murder’, as well as their recent actions. In saying that we’ll ignore their latest extracurricular activates and take the album for what it is.
The album is back to back hardcore metal. It may seem like lead vocalist David Gunn is purely full of pent up anger, and the vocal content of the tracks may come packed with some truly horrifying imagery, but overall the music becomes somewhat compelling. The first three tracks, ‘Killem All’, ‘Best Nite Of My Life’ and ‘Murder Murder Murder’, are all packed full of blood curdling screams, incredibly heavy guitar riffs and its all accompanied by a hugely foreboding, almost crushing bass line. Thankfully the album breaks itself up a bit here and there with tracks like ‘Take It’ and ‘eyes’ which really seems to try and bring some form of order into an album of pure chaos.
Scattered throughout the album there are a number of tracks that do seem to pick themselves above the others, which in an album like this is quite impressive. ‘Fat Around The Heart’ is incredibly heavy, but the lyrics being sung are all incredibly well executed, and within the pure destruction that the track creates you feel just a small amount of melody, all created purely by David Gunn. ‘boogeymen’ feels a lot more like a showcase of the guitars, showing that the guitar tones can subtly add more than just adding increasing pressure throughout the tracks. ‘devil don’t cry’ is strangely a beautiful track surrounded by violence.
For some King 810’s ‘Memoirs of a Murderer’ could quite easily be too much, and certainly with a 16 track run time there is far too much here, without enough change to really make you want to listen completely in one listen. ‘Memoirs’ is an album which you need to listen to in chunks; it’s incredibly tough to make it through the entirety in one run. There’s certainly an emotional force throughout the album, but overall it falls flat for the sheer amount of heavy tones being played, coupled with the length of the album.
