Palace of the King may not be the first name which you’d associate with rock bands from Australia as you run through the list of usual suspects. That being said, much like pretty much everything to come from the land down under – at least on the rock spectrum – they’re nothing short of excellent.
Get Right With Your Maker is the sort of album which comes from seasoned pros. With this, their third album, the band have no problem asserting their authority on knowing their sound. This is a band who knows exactly what they are. Classic rock with psychedelic moments and loaded with blues for good measure. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s a good helping of fuzz, distortion and groove.
Such a cocktail sounds like a band attempting to do too much but essentially, this is what Clutch would sound like if they were from the outback rather than Maryland. Although with Machine involved in mixing of the album, it’s hardly surprising. With vibes of those 70s British hard rock acts, there’s the muscular bravado of Led Zeppelin, the complexity of Deep Purple and the want for good times in their (kind of) compatriots AC/DC.
Tim Henwood’s rasping vocals are perfect for the music. As he burrows between the scratchy, bluesy riffs and keys, opener “I am the Storm” is a great reintroduction to the band. Perfectly formed at seven minutes, there’s a sound not dissimilar from the first Scorpion Child record, albeit less trippy. At no point does the track tire or falter, everything is there for a reason and had it been shortened, it’d have been missing something.
It’s not all like that with most tracks half of that running time, if not even shorter. Juxtaposed with lead single “It’s Been a Long Time Coming”, the pair of songs make for the best examples of the album. Far more direct and stripped back, it shows them with their teeth bared and the power they are capable of. Whilst the opener is the band experiment without becoming turgid and making a track as grandiose as possible, there’s something delightful in hearing the band show their primal side.
Riffs are the order of the day found on tracks like “Said the Spider to the Bird” and if you declawed it, it’d probably sound like a tripped-out 60s cult classic. It’s revisited on “Move Through the Fire” but with the keyboards less prevalent, making it feel more direct yet less finished.
As “Back on My Feet” closes out the album, it looks like another long track to bookend the album but instead, it’s two bolted together. The acoustic (and title) number which truly finishes the album, buried right at the end, feels like the band saying they’ve done it properly. For every band should have an album ending in this fashion.
Palace of the King continue to stand out on the modern scene for all the right reasons, using the psychedelic moments of the 60s with the blues inspired heaviness of the early 70s and a good dose of fuzz, they’ve got a sound not many other bands are tapping into. Get Right With Your Maker should be an album at odds with itself. But its not. Instead, it’s been deftly and lovingly crafted into something far more sure-footed than anything which preceded it.
Get Right With Your Maker is out now
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