Review of Duologue's debut LP, 'Song & Dance'

There are some artists and bands out there who are ruined by adopting the mentality ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ far too literally for far too long. There are some bands out there who are too ‘artistic’ to be ‘pinned down’ by labels and consequently make it their mission to dabble in every genre going, thus alienating their already somewhat perplexed fans. Then there are the artists and bands who get the balance just right and, if you’re lucky, create their own ‘sound’ in the process. Judging by their debut LP,Song & Dance (which you can buy here), Duologue is one of those bands.

The strength in depth, the sculpted eccentricity, of this record is simply staggering. You could say this is solely represented by Zeros – how often does one come across a combination of guitars that are rocked as hard as the drums, piano that is played as elegantly as the accompanying strings and dubstep, let alone one that actually works? – but the rest of the album simply wouldn’t allow for it. For example, whilst Sinner and Snap Out Of It have the gutsy aggression of a band just coming into their own (the latter is reminiscent of Muse’s Plug In Baby days, with the most adequate way to describe the former being the kind of song the forces of Good and Evil would fiercely battle to), Underworld, with its relaxed beats and soft chimes, reveals the other half of Duologue in a way that is a little more subtle than the crash-bang dubstep evident on Cut and Run.

Rather oxymoronically, it’s to the epic Push It, clocking in at more than ten minutes, that one can find instances of the five piece’s intricacy and tenderness. Rather than forever trying to impress with how much noise their guitar strings and Korg machines can make, and thus place themselves in the dangerously repetitive ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ category, Push It, and the LP as a whole, is diced up when the band illustrate what kind of noise their tools can make, as well as how little. Just as the band show how they can do dark and ominous synth as well as they can plucky math rock on just a couple of the many sections of their recent single, such blood, sweat and tears have evidently been dedicated to the likes of the heartfelt Escape Artist and the soft Constant in the hope to maintain the high attention to detail and complexity omnipresent throughout the album.

It is their ability to compose a not-so-subtle rock anthem that’s as good as a more subtle detailed electronica beat, to embrace two hugely contrasting genres in such an innovative way, that creates their very own sound and consequently makes both the band, and their debut LP, so exciting.

Review of To Kill A King's debut LP, 'Cannibals With Cutlery'

To introduce their debut album, Cannibals With Cutlery (available to buy physically and digitally): two elephant seals fighting each other. The video for leading single, Cold Skin: what can only be described as clowns gone wrong wrestling. Although on the surface To Kill A King’s promotional material appears to be nothing other than plain bizarre, delve a little deeper and you start to uproot what the five piece is all about; they are connoisseurs of the alternative-folk genre, but with evidently more emphasis on the ‘alternative’ aspect than the ‘folk’. It’s fortunate as the genre can be one full of clichés and stereotypes happily conformed to but, with 100,000+ views of Cold Skin (and counting), it’s a quirkiness the listening public are clearly embracing.

Wolves, for example, is accompanied by a faint synth-based beat that would not be so out of place in the EDM scene, whilst Children Who Start Fires is kept company by drums that are surprisingly bongo-like. Even more curious, though, is frontman Ralph Pelleymounter’s choice not to make full use of his deliciously baritone vocal chords on Fictional State, but instead opting for a style not so dissimilar to that of Mike Skinner of The Streets. And the album, maybe even the alt-folk genre as a whole, is much more refreshing as a result.

But it’s not just the London outfit’s overly aggressive elephant seals and pseudo-clowns that can be read into. So, too, can the album title, Cannibals With Cutlery. As previously established, the band likes things to be on the slightly unconventional side, thus accounting for ‘Cannibals’. As for the ‘With Cutlery’, one can turn to the sheer sophistication of the album; sure the layers of brass and strings featured on over half of the tracks brings a certain refinement to proceedings, but it is the band’s use of the instruments that really shine through. As expected, the boys make use of the manpower to hand in obvious ways – Choices has to be described as majestic and Funeral nothing short of epic – but in other instances the orchestral sections really help to evoke feeling and emotion that is otherwise unreachable; it is difficult to imagine the power of Gasp and the contrasting tenderness of Family without TKAK using the help offered from the classical genre to such good effect.

It is their maturity, their ability to see what works and what doesn’t, their capability to work with what they have and haven’t got (compare a stripped back Sofar to a recording studio packed out with an orchestra) that confirms To Kill A King are ready to gobble up the world before them. Let’s hope they’ve got enough cutlery, because they’re going to need it.