King 810 - Suicide King

Earlier this decade King 810 was forcing themselves into headlines with their unapologetic delivery of the kind of nu metal that the genres detractors thought had finally died for good, while being hailed (by some) as the next Slipknot and the riot leaders of the 2010’s nu metal uprising while supporting them on the tour for their long-awaited fifth album. With the name of the band being derived from the area code they came from, its members have been very vocal about how their upbringing in what has often been referred to as the murder capital of the U.S. has inspired their music. Their stage production has been no more restrained, with police tape and prop guns serving as a staple element of their presentation to represent the violent environment the band emerged from. While the band’s dedication to their musical tributing to their hometown has been respectable, doing their part to raise funds to mitigate their town’s water sanitation crisis for example, the sound they’ve channeled has never really connected with me, and it’s certainly not out of some distaste for nu metal on my part. I just couldn’t see the hype surrounding them and I couldn’t really see them ever rivaling the likes of Korn or Slipknot with the basic metalcore grooves I heard on taster songs like “Fat Around the Heart”. Consequently, I never really heard any of their previous albums, but I figured on their third outing, I might as well give it a go.

Having not ridden the hype wave that got them the main support slot for Slipknot as smoothly as they possibly should have, King 810 are now riding the downward slope of their popularity peak and seemingly not putting much faith in turning any of that momentum back upward, which is not to say they’ve let themselves go and stopped trying, but they seem to be quite content where they are, and I honestly much prefer that to the kind of pandering that’s been coming out from a lot of other mainstream bands lately. The band’s third album is devoid of any kind of melodic metalcore ripping-off, but even for as established as King 810 are in their semi-theatrical industrial rapcore and nu metal, Suicide King is a very sloppy offering of wallpaper guitar riffs, haphazardly applied instrumental and production flair, and lots of overacting behind the microphone.

The intro track, “Heartbeats”, is menacing and hard-hitting enough, and the following song, “Braveheart”, carries some of that momentum though its oddly delivered refrains, even if it does lose the momentum in the friction of the clunky song structure. And indeed the momentum is never really regained.

Songs like the sample-led “A Million Dollars” and the brief “What’s Gotten into Me” surely take some of the more creative approaches to  the band’s more introspective and brooding facets, but without much in the way of thoughtful composition beyond stylistic combination, they don’t really take off either. The trudging downtempo piano/strings ballad, “Black Rifle”, is another bit of departure for the band, filling the mandatory slow song slot with some ambiguously sarcastic gods/guns romanticism that’s at least kind of soulful and made all the more climactic with the gospel choir at the end.

But then there are plenty of Soundcloud-trap-flavored head-scratchers on the album as well, like the unimaginative “God Is Watching”. The street flexing on the song “.45” makes for one of the most juvenile and unoriginal moments on the album, sounding like a more repetitive and slightly more guitar-heavy version of a City Morgue song. The choppy rap flow and hip hop hi-hat/snare sampling of “Bang Guns” also don’t quite combine too well with the band’s hardcore delivery of one of the most irritating hooks on the album.

“Wade in the Water” is another string-backed ballad, but it certainly meanders through some overserious whispered mantras in a manner that seems very structurally unintentional and unambitious. The following song, “Sing Me to Sleep”, closes the album out on a similarly dramatically melancholic note, but with at least a little more intended uneasiness in the atmosphere.

I’m not quite sure what King 810 was going for on this album. The diversity of the tracks here is pretty much the only praiseworthy thing about this album, but the ineptitude with which they go into that variety really reduces the album to such an amateurish level, I can’t really say they justify their foray down the musical avenues they overly confidently stroll.

8/10 (hopefully I don’t have to further explain that)