King Howl from Cagliari, Sardinia, plays heavy blues: the raw sounds of the blues, filtered by a multitude of different musical influences coming from stoner rock, ’70s classic rock, funk, and punk in a crossover labored with spontaneity and naturalness, a flow of sounds that never stops.
King Howl’s new album, Homecoming, represents a new chapter in the band’s stylistic universe, spurring their trademark sound while mixing it with new compositional and sound influences. A mix of blues, stoner, psychedelia, and classic rock that paints the soundscape of an on-the-road story set in 1960s America, a narrative plot that permeates the entire work, accompanied by a constant sonic evolution, always on the road. Thus, King Howl returns to the theme of travel, the band’s favorite concept from the beginning.
King Howl vocalist Diego Pani tells us more about the album:
“In this story, the young protagonist departs a rural setting, as captured by the bluesy tones of the opener ‘The Rooster’ and the rock’n’roll anthem ‘From the Cradle.’ The journey continues on the Kyussian railroad in ‘The Train,’ leading to the nineties-echoed Spoken word of ‘John Henry Days’ and the classic rock sounds of ‘Motorsound,’ a true ode to the big truck engine’s vibrations.
“The sonic journey flows into the oblivion of ‘Slowly Coming Down,’ where doom and psychedelia carry a dark foreboding. ‘Tempted,’ on the other hand, is a successful mix of country blues and stoner rock, an influence more and more present in the desertic ‘Jupiter,’ a track inspired by one of the characters in writer James Anderson’s novel ‘The Never-Open Desert Diner’.
“The album’s heart lies in the theme of travel and change, symbolized by the animal world with the powerful ‘The Great Blue Heron,’ marked by the Hammond organ that makes the piece even more granitic.
“Furthermore, the album Homecoming pays homage to the great Rolling Stones with the sixties classic ‘Gimme Shelter.’
“The incredible journey concludes with ‘Home,’ an angry but hopeful homecoming — an epic in music, a round trip of growth and change, of damnation, redemption, and rebirth.”
The album was recorded in Sardinia by Roberto Macis and Willy Cuccu and mixed by Nene Baratto and Richard Behrens at Big Snuff Studio in Berlin, a key production hub for international heavy Psych (Kadavar, Samsara Blues Experiment, Elder, Wucan). A sound production focused on an “organic” analog sound, thanks to the use of vintage gear and a reel-to-reel master made by Nene Baratto at the Berlin-based Morphine Raum Studio.
Homecoming is released on June 9, 2023 via Electric Valley Records and can be pre-ordered HERE.
