Review Summary: A Stunningly Unique Masterpiece
Wow. This is something new. King 810 might be the most interesting metal band to come out in the last 10 years. And if you'll keep reading, you just might find out why.
There have been a lot of comparisons to Slipknot, Korn and other bands from the heavier end of the nu metal spectrum from this debut. And yes, opening pit stompers like Killem All, Best Nite Of My Life and the subtly named Murder Murder Murder do have shades of Slipknot in their simple riffs and vicious vocals. But what Memoirs of a Murderer is, thankfully, is NOT a simple blast of heaviness to be discarded after one listen.
This is not an album for those with low attention spans. This is a concept album, spiraling down from grim to grimmer. Set against the backdrop of Flint, Michigan, (aka Murder City), it would have been very easy for David Gunn and the rest of King 810 to just release a handful of crunching tunes and call it a day. That seems to be what most new bands go for. Release an album of similar sounding songs, all of which usually sound like some other, much bigger band (see the infinite number of Slayer, Death or Darkthrone copies out there) and hope that one or maybe two of them find their way into people's playlists. King 810 have a full album's worth of heavy material on Memoirs of A Murderer, with the standout tracks being Fat Around The Heart and War Outside (which sounds like somebody tied Five Finger Death Punch up in a basement for six years with nothing but bread and water till they were stripped down to their bare bones), all of which have suitably violent lyrics to match their Flint hometown. But that is only half of this masterpiece.
The heaviness first breaks on track 4, Take It. This jarring shift in tone from a song called Murder Murder Murder into a bluesy acoustic riff that sounds almost like it could have been written by Johnny Cash might be too much for some listeners. And if it was the one soft song on the album, I would have called it a terrible idea. But, thankfully, it isn't.
It's at the halfway point that David Gunn finally cracks the thug facade and really lets us into the recesses of his mind. As the absolute bruiser Treading and Trodden fades, a gritty tape recorder starts and Gunn's voice slides out of the speakers like a bad thought. Anatomy 1:2 is the first of two spoken word pieces on this record and it is here that King 810 really take you away. Gunn's monotone, mildly threatening whisper builds into a powerful voice as he tells of the hopelessness of Flint, the way it shapes a man and his general feeling of fear every single day. It is a bold move to get so personal on an album so dark. Anatomy 1:2 fades into Eyes, a shimmering ballad with electronic pulses and ghostly refrains similar to Nine Inch Nails at their esoteric peak. And as Eyes finishes, we hear the sound of someone walking down a street, breathing heavily out of fear. That's when the first blasts of Desperate Lovers explode out of the speakers in a eerie similarity to gunshots. The jump back to heaviness is startling and very effective.
From here on out, Memoirs of A Murderer takes a dark, twisted path. Boogeyman has David Gunn collapsing into wavering, almost crying vocal lines that recall Korn's first album as he tells the story of a murderer haunted by guilt, seeing his victim everywhere, from playing piano to rotting in the street. Devil Don't Cry and State Of Nature are two more acoustic tracks where Gunn's poetry really shines through, with line like "I'll pretend your touch makes everything right" and "Shadows from the mountains just killed the trees". Carve My Name amps the eerie factor up through the roof, with Gunn sounding like the Devil whispering in your ear. It takes too long building up though, and coupled with another spoken word piece right after, this is where the album hits its weak point.
Thankfully,"War Outside" and the mid paced chants and gangster rap of "Write About Us" fixes this. Write About Us contains the most intriguing lyrics of all, as Gunn tells what happened to everyone he knew as a child in Flint, including bleeping out the name of a girl he found dead of a suicide.
Memoirs of A Murderer is complex, dark, shockingly unique and utterly fearless. Being a concept album, it's best to listen to all at once. This is not swaggering, gangster inflected metalcore like Hatebreed or Throwdown. This is heavy music at it's most visceral and most intense. An absolute masterpiece and essential listen for 2014.
