The King Blues – “The Gospel Truth” [Album Review]

The King Blues hit the UK scene hard with 2008’s release Save The World, Get The Girl pushing the band, that were no strangers to the hardships and struggles that come with the music industry, into the mainstream. Politically driven and down to earth, The King Blues were always a band I could relate to in the context of their music. After 2011’s Punk & Poetry album Johnny Fox and crew pretty much fell of the raider much to the disappointment of their fans and they would not be heard from again until 2016 when they released Off With Their Heads.

The Gospel Truth is a bit of a change of direction for the band with very little, if any, view points on politics and concentrates more on the emotions the band face on a day to day basis. The opening track, “The Truth, The Whole Truth” is simply a medley of recordings from their fans about how they have coped in their lives over the last year, highlighting struggles, successes and everything in-between and is the perfect framing devise for what the album is all about. “Heart of a Lion” really does encapsulate what the band are all about, fighting back against those hardships all held together with a punk rock beat. Keeping us with the same theme is “Not Another Love Song” a tune filled with hard bass, gang vocals and Fox’s unique style of poetry that fans have come to love about the band. Alas the strength of the opening tracks is not enough to hold this album together as a vast majority of this album contains really quite mediocre songs like The Bullingdon Boys”, “New Gods” and “America Don’t Want me Anymore” to name a few. They simply don’t hold up to what I have come to expect of a band I’ve held in such high regards in the past. That’s not to say all songs here fall short, “Nike Town” highlights the bands feelings towards the capitalist world we live in and is true to form of what I fell in love with the band for.

In conclusion, I will confess, I am a little disappointed with this latest outing as it fails to get me charged in the way its predecessors did. First and foremost, it is a punk album and if I have taken anything from this band, they are not here to impress me, but to write songs about what matters to them. Although it hasn’t quite hit the mark for me, I don’t doubt that their biggest fans will still find a place for this one.

The Gospel Truth Track Listing:

01. The Truth, The Whole Truth
02. Heart of a Lion
03. Not Another Love Song
04. The Bullingdon Boys
05. New Gods
06. The Truth Comes Out
07. Wish You Weren’t Here
08. America Don’t Want Me
09. Ghost of Us
10. Getting Better
11. Nike Town
12. You’ve Taken My Spark
13. And Nothing But The Truth

Run Time: 38:52
Release Date: April 14, 2017

Check out the track “Nike Town”