After the 90's, it seems that any vegan straightedge band seems hell-bent on pigeonholing itself into being a metalcore or melodic death metal band, with good reason, too. Abnegation's foray into death metal, Verses of the Bleeding, sucked and Earth Crisis's attempts to become like Pantera were lukewarm at best. Kingdom tries their hand at stepping outside of the box with something a little less extreme: modern hardcore.
The record begins with the fast opener "Final Generation," but a couple things are fundamentally wrong from the get go: the guitar tone is so weak and is practically drowned out by the drums and vocals. The bass is barely there; I heard maybe two or three basslines throughout the whole record. The vocals are probably the worst part. Imagine if the singer from First Blood was a girl; the gender switch doesn't matter at all since it still sucks.
The songs themselves are all nondescript hardcore. A constant two-step beat is going and of course there's the mosh part/crew vocals at the end of the song, and as the record goes on I continue to lose interest. It's really a shame, because the lyrics on this album are awesome. Unlike their contemporaries, the words never seem ridiculous or preachy. In fact, they're nice enough to save the preaching for the liner notes. What isn't nice is the fact that the booklet wasn't printed on recycled paper. Better luck next time, Kingdom.
