There’s something glorious about a hard-rock song that could easily crush a wall but then refuses to stop talking about your personal struggles. Here comes Kings County‘s “The Dead of Night,” delivering precisely that: hard guitars, big alternative-rock riffs and vocals that insist on making sure everyone in the room shares the burden of every word.
That band, out of Orlando, Florida, fuses 90s style guitar driven swagger with the relentless heaviness of modern hard rock. On “The Dead of Night” those sounds come together somewhere just north of a guitar fueled swagger of the 90s and the slick sheen of modern rock. It’s familiar territory, but not a bad place to go. The guitars drag it out while the melodic vocals prevent the whole thing from becoming just a big wall of sound.
Then there are the lyrics: Underneath all that tumult, “The Dead of Night” is a song about the hidden lives we lead when no one’s looking. It’s a song about the gap between who we seem to be and who we are when we’re overcome by our darker side-by fear and anger and all those other less appealing elements of our biology that we try to hide from the world. The song makes for a suitably bombastic subject; one it’s constructed to be played in the cavernous space of a dark arena and heard by a very excited crowd.
Dexter’s vocal style is full-attitude all the way, with Rob Zombie as an inspiration for his boisterous vocal stylings. It’s not terribly sophisticated, but then again that’s not what any of us were expecting from songs of this style.
And yet the track’s best feature is the notion that darkness isn’t inherently something to be overcome. On the contrary, sometimes the way through it is through it. It’s a familiar sentiment, but Kings County offers enough heft and volume to make it feel authentic and not just put on a meme.
“Dead of Night” doesn’t conjure the wheel out on hard rock – it doesn’t have to. It’s a blusterous, hook-heavy tune which has an idea of what it wants to be: loud, melodic, a little dark and above all: theatrical. Some monsters need to be faced with the volume turned up.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.
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