Artist: King’s Tonic
Title: Rock Monarchy
Genre: Punk Rock
Release Date: 29th October 2010
Label: Supermusic
Album Review
Ever since their second album ‘Fuck Your Neighbour’, German band KING’S TONIC has been releasing an album per year and ‘Rock Monarchy’ their fourth to date succeeds ‘21’ in just the same tradition. The album’s songs morph into one big sludge of not very often disturbed homogeny of sound, several slightly different riffs... only their lyrics and few variations of song melodies help to tell them apart. Five of the tracks are in English, the remaining four are in German, and three of those are versions of the same songs you’d have heard in English first. They’ve extensively toured over Germany and played many dates worldwide and state this as a reason of the language division yet it feels more that they were rushing to have a new LP out there. It’d have been much better to release an album full of different songs and bring the three same tracks either in German or English versions as bonus tracks.
KING’S TONIC claims to have a Punk edge and yet they only seem to cut its balls and the aggression they speak of is comparable to one inch teddy bear trying to fight The Predator. Punk without the authentic attitude is an empty and somehow sad caricature. It’s fine to play three chords but if you don’t have the edge and the real attitude, it’s just plain boring hollow-sounding music. They only demonstrate the problem with many of the latest Punk Rock bands which is that to hear one is to hear them all. Very few cut an original take on the genre and this band whatever promo clamour they make is simply not one of them.
The first song, ‘Rock Monarchy’, with its counterpart German version later on, starts enticingly enough if only they’ve left out the punk tempo drumming which spoils the more compelling riff. Another exception to my general boredom with this album is ‘21 (Weiter, weiter)’ where the guitar sounds more diverse and unique, even the song’s oomph sounds a bit more natural than in the rest of the songs. They get to sound also slightly less generic there for longer than a few seconds. Regardless of that improvement, the great thing about the album is only its last note falling, KING’S TONIC is simply not a very exciting - not even that good experience and moreover, ‘Rock Monarchy’ sounds as if I’ve heard it all before.
Tracklist
01. Rock Monarchy - 3.37
02. Modern Times - 3.32
03. Punk Rococo - 3.24
04. Renaissance - 3.23
05. My Kind Of Romanticism - 2.44
06. Monarchie des Rock - 3.34
07. Punk Rokoko - 3.36
08. Renaissance - 3.27
09. 21 (Weiter weiter) -2.52
Line-up
James Mean – Vocals
Swen O. Heiland – Bass
Spiros Efthimiadis – Guitar
Christos Efthimiadis – Drums
Websites
http://kingstonic.wordpress.com/ / http://www.myspace.com/kingstonic
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 4
Sound: 4
Total: 4 / 10
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