Kingdom Leaks & Beyond: Moving Forward

[Dancing in the Dust 2,058]

So after like ten listens I finally have a proper opinion of this album that I can put into words 

The first 5 tracks are dull and absolutely boring in my opinion. They don't have the best choruses and they sound very similar to each other. It's very bland. From track 6 and onwards the album feels great, not a song sounds the same and some of those lyrics are absolutely wonderful, as are the cleans and uncleans. But. Because I can't enjoy half the album, the rating deserves the same. 5/10

[LKA 7,181]

I finally listened to the album in full after not really feeling motivated to previously because I didn't really like the singles all that much and had a lot else to listen to. Now that I've listened to it, all I can do is ask myself what the hell went wrong. If I had to give this album a new title it'd be "Writer's Block - The Album".

 

I like pretty much eveything Caliban had put out previously to at least some degree and didn't mind the sound change on Gravity at all. But man, this is undoubtedly their worst release yet in my opinion. It feels like they either completely ran out of ideas or simply stopped caring. Every single song is structured the same: screamed verses over fairly upbeat, chuggy guitars, semi-clean gang vocals in the chorus, boring breakdowns, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. I guess this could be a cool sound in a live setting but I just don't think it works on record and I simply don't think it's worth the trade-off whatsoever. The problem with the choruses in my opinon is also that despite definitely trying to, they are not even all that catchy.

 

It feels like the album is so devoid of fresh ideas or creativity that they could have easily been compressed onto a single song. The album's mediocrity also doesn't warrant the extra-long runtime at all either. I think that Before Later Becomes Never is the only song that at least somewhat stands out because of its more memorable chorus and Set Me Free is alright too but other than that, the only song I did not want to skip after the first chorus was the last track which doesn't even count because it's just a re-recording of an earlier song.

 

As far as albums that I actually forced myself to listen to fully despite not enjoying it go, this is definitely my least favourite album of 2018 so far. Of course it's not the worst, but I do think it's the worst out of all the ones that could have been good judging by their respective bands' previous release history.

Please do not think I'm dissing you if you enjoyed this album, I'm just trying to express my utter disappointment with this (which I already kinda anticipated after the singles so at least it wasn't super surprising for me).