Review Summary: A fitting closing chapter to one of the most memorable concept albums in recent years.
You know, I never was much of a Whitechapel fan before The Valley, something I believe extends to a considerable parcel of the band's fanbase these days. Earlier singles "Brimstone" and "Black Bear" were impressive and generated curiosity, already showing the direction towards a more grandiose experience with all the atmospheric leads hidden beneath and between the heavy chugging. And while following songs showed that the band was branching out their sound, it's the ending notes of Doom Woods that bring to light what a fantastic piece of story-telling and world-building it is (The Valley often occupying the same space in my memory that The Devil All The Time's Ohio, Alan Wake's Bright Falls, and Twin Peaks reside), so when the band announced that their next album was going to be a sequel to its story, I was beyond excited.
Truth be told, Kin is a totally different beast, and when opener "I Will Find You" shows its cards, it's noticeable that the whole opressive atmosphere that built The Valley as this palpable place is gone, the place no longer being the star of the story, but Phil's own personal experience and conflict with the events that ocurred during the first part of the story, its lyrics ("The devil is dead / I have never felt the way that I have until I left The Valley in flames") announcing the beginning of the new chapter in a fairly upbeat way.
While songs like "A Bloodsoaked Symphony", "The Ones That Made Us" and "To The Wolves" offer crushingly and uninterrupted moments of heaviness and each member of the band shows their importance and competence, it's vocalists Phil Bozeman and guitarist Ben Savage that steal the show in Kin with beautiful clean vocals and tasteful and souful solos and guitar melodies aplenty, the two last tracks ("Without Us" and "Kin") showing each of them, respectivately, at some of their strongest moments.
Many times I read that Kin was The Valley Pt.2, and I don't know if I fully agree with this statement. While, of course, both albums play each other narrative-wise and it was the public and critical acclaim that the changes in The Valley that built a comfortable situation where the band could go further, Kin is a very different album, trading hostility for comfort, endless desesperation and hopelessness for bittersweet closure. While it may be a divisive record due to how different it is, when the last chorus lyrics of the closing track of "It's time for both of us to let this go" fade into the acoustic guitar and this one fades into silence, the same wave of relief that washes over us at the end of a good book is felt, and you can't help but feel satisfaction to what gorgeous story was told.
