King Giant - Southern Darkness (2009)

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After reviewing very good Stoner Rock bands from Poland in the last few weeks (Black River and Corruption), it’s very easy to determine that King Giant are from the USA and from the ‘Old South’ their brand of Stoner Metal has a nice Southern feel to it. With a hefty dose of lyrics about Drugs, Depression, Fear, Hate, etc. King Giant has a very catchy sound that hopefully gets them noticed by a bigger label in the future.

Opening up with “Solace”, the band quickly shows what they are all about: catchy down-tuned guitar riffs with raspy vocals and a healthy Stoner vibe that prevails through the whole release and greatly captures the genre’s atmosphere. While many other releases are faster paced and more ‘hard rocking’, King Giant goes more Stoner/Doom Metal than average and we completely dig the rocking melancholic atmosphere that the band creates.

While King Giant’s sound it’s very crushing, it does get a bit repetitive and might drown a few people that are not comfortable with ‘real’ Stoner Metal/Doom Metal, and “Southern Darkness” feels a bit linear until we hit “Mississippi River”. This song has an intro straight from an old Western movie or something like that. The rhythm of this song is just plain wicked, giving the album a very good ‘refresher’ song, and one of our favorite ones from this release.

Through the release we get plenty of chill Southern Rock influenced sections like on “Desert Run” and “Lady Whiskey” (and many others), that greatly enhance the band’s sound. We also have very good weeping guitar solos and chugging bass lines, showing that King Giant has pretty solid songwriting ideas to create catchy and depressing songs. As a bonus, there is a cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd's “Needle and the Spoon”, that is very nicely executed and provides a great closing to this album.

In overall, we think that “Southern Darkness” is a very solid album from a promising band. There are plenty of hard rocking sections, but we preferred the slower and depressive parts that give this album a very melancholic feeling. All fans of Stoner Metal will surely be please by this solid release and will hopefully be supporting the band to allow them to keep releasing albums like this one.

Band: King Giant Album: Southern Darkness
Label: Self-Released

Release: 2009

Official Site myspace
Genre: Stoner Metal

Country: USA

Rating: 86/100
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