Young Guns - All Our Kings Are Dead
Review by Jack Foley
YOUNG Guns are the new bright hopes on the hard rock scene. Based in High Wycombe, they’ve quickly shot to prominence off the back of their Mirrors EP in July 2009, boisterous support gigs for the likes of Lostprophets, Taking Back Sunday and Fightstar, and by winning the Best New Band award at the Kerrang! readers’ poll.
Debut album All Our Kings Are Dead is the first proper chance to weigh up their credentials and, alas, I can’t quite hear what the fuss is all about. True, they possess a confidence usually reserved for the biggest acts, and a depth of sound designed to fill the biggest stadiums around the world.
But the songs lack much identity. They’re aggressive, sometimes despondent and mostly fairly generic for the hard rock scene. There’s nothing to really set them apart from contemporaries such as Lostprophets, Fightstar, Funeral For A Friend and the like.
That’s not to say they can’t carry a tune. A track like Stitches is shot through with some thrilling guitar work, and a finer sense of brooding that matches the lyrics, which stem from self worth and uncertainty.
But as with a lot of big rock acts of this nature, there’s a little too much emphasis on darkness and depression. It’s a rallying call to a disaffected youth that screams it’s OK to be angry at the world. But it’s a little unrelenting.
Vocalist Gustav Woods explains: “The album as a whole is, by some subconscious act, a document of both where I am at this point in my life, the experiences I’ve had on my journey to where I am and who I am today, and the lessons I’ve learned.
“I can only write about what is relevant to me, or else it feels fake. I gew up without my father, and it’s only as I get older that I realise how this has shaped me, and I in turn realised that in some ways I felt that the same lack of a traditional role model figure was also relevant to being a young person in our modern world.
“From being a child up to now, it has always felt like there is an inescapable feeling of futility and inevitability, almost a direction-less resentment threaded through my generation. Aggression and nihilism is not just accepted but more and more glamourised, we have no religion to find solace in, no political leaders that inspire faith, and it’s easy to feel lost and somehow abandoned.”
It’s all cheery stuff… although Woods refutes the notion that this makes for a depressing listen, insisting there’s an overall feeling of positivity and hope running through the songs. He hopes it’ll inspire people to feel they can create their own future; to take a leaf out of Young Guns’ own success.
Those with similar sentiments and feelings of abandonment appear to have flocked to the band so far, and there’s no reason to suggest that All Our Kings Are Dead won’t catapult them into the big leagues in a big hurry. But for an artist who expresses a desire to inspire… there’s very little to escape the run-of-the-mill, solid but unspectacular vibe surrounding many of the songs.
The guitars are powerful, epic and loud (witness Elements), but there’s simply not enough diversity. If anything, the LP is marked by the couple of occasions when it slows the pace and opts for something a little different (though never too far).
The aforementioned Stitches is one such example, and a highlight, while After The War, which deals with death, is another – although the serene opening is still quickly replaced by the more familiar sound. It works better, though… as does Winter Kiss and, early on, At The Gates.
But songs such as Sons of Apathy, Meter & Verse, Endless Grey and Beneath The Waves are just so generic and indifferent that they don’t seem capable of inspiring anything other than apathy. For all their noise, Young Guns don’t have enough firepower in their armoury just yet to really achieve the status they’re seeking.
Download picks: Stitches, After The War, At The Gates, Elements
Track listing: