Some battles just don’t get seen until the world’s gone quiet and Kings County take that very real and unsettling phenomenon and turn it into “The Dead of Night”. It’s a very aggressive piece of guitar work with some very strong melodic vocals and the overall feel is one of a very assertive piece of music. It’s a good example of the fusion of the ’90s hard rock feel with a modern heft and it’s a very effective platform on which to explore the darker side of people and the conflict between the two halves of us.
There’s a real sense of urgency about the performance, the guitars providing the heft and the vocals the melody. Rob Dexter’s approach is all about attitude and that gives the vocals a very confrontational edge which really underlines the subject matter. Rather than taking the dark side of the song and mellowing it, the melodic elements actually make it more immediate and the result is a very effective balance between aggression and accessibility. It’s a sound that’s designed to grab you and still have the catchiness of a proper rock ‘n’ roll anthem.
Identity is the key to the song’s emotional arc. There’s a persona that’s presented to the world and then there’s the other side of the coin which comes into play in the privacy of one’s own thoughts and is faced with things that might otherwise never be. Kings County use that tension between the outward and the inward to explore the fraught nature of good and evil. The song doesn’t suggest that evil has to be simply vanquished. The message is that by facing up to the unpleasant truths, you can actually discover a kind of strength and see things in yourself that you may not have seen at all in the easier days.
Rather than being an easy way out of the problems it deals with, “The Dead of Night” is actually a very direct approach to them. It’s a hard rock record in the truest sense with a great deal of gritty guitar, a very strong melodic element and a very clear direction. Kings County take a very personal subject and make it into a very accessible hard rock record. It’s a record that makes you feel the discomfort of facing up to your own failings, but also the potential that there is in doing so. A very effective record in the end, a record that really does make you think that self understanding can start with facing up to the bits you’d rather not.
KINGSCOUNTYOFFICIAL.COM X.COM FACEBOOK YOUTUBE INSTAGRAM TIKTOK SPOTIFY
