I spend an unhealthy amount of time scrolling through obscure music forums at two in the morning. Sometimes I wonder if the internet has completely desensitised my ears to weirdness. We have all heard every possible combination of genres by now. It takes something truly bizarre to make me stop and actually pay attention. The debut single from King’s Evil managed to do exactly that. It feels like stumbling into a strange, low-stakes fever dream.
Right out of the gate, a bizarre lead synth completely sets the stage. It acts as the ultimate hype man, building up this awkward anticipation until the vocals finally kick in. The songwriting itself is packed with these off-the-wall idiomatic expressions. I actually caught myself pausing the track a few times just wondering how on earth they even thought to phrase it like that. It sounds like a bizarre collaboration between Ween and early LCD Soundsystem. It is wonderfully strange, and you just cannot look away from it.
But the production details are what hooked me for good. Hearing those soft vocal backups sneak into my left ear was such a sneaky and brilliant touch. The stereo spread on the lead vocals is just buttery sweet. I was also geeking out over how they sidechained the guitars to duck perfectly out of the way whenever the singer takes a breath. That is a total pro move right there. If they want to push this to the absolute limit next time, they should mess around with the vocal energy a bit more. Right now, the singer stays in a pretty tight pitch range the whole way through. Breaking the song into chunks and giving each part a wildly different vocal intensity would make the whole thing feel way more intimate and raw. Still, this single drips with weird charm, and I am totally here for it.
Written by Oluwaseun Adeyemi
