Review Summary: A well-thought-out industrial record with plenty of surprises in between.
The internet can be a useful tool for information, but one of the caveats with it, and something that is becoming increasingly more prevalent as it gets older, is having to sieve through a swamp of vapid “content” in order to find the stuff that’s meaningful and worthwhile. As such, through no fault of your own, you’re going to miss out on things that will resonate with you. Despite acknowledging this fact, it still doesn’t stop me being any less vexed with the fact I missed out on
Spire of Fear in August of last year, only discovering it this week, ironically, through an Instagram ad promoting King Yosef on a European tour with Youth Code and Street Sect – two notable names leading the charge in the heavy industrial movement that’s been metastasising in its current form for the last half-decade. For once it was an ad that actually recommended something nourishing, and from the moment I heard “Molting Fear” I knew it was right up my alley, with its brutal, capacious grooves, abrasive lo-fi electronic soundscapes, and Yosef’s well-rounded screams.
Diving into
Spire of Fear, it’s a concise, eclectic mixture of traditional and modern industrial stylings. Yosef’s harsh screams have a similar resonance to that of Black Sheep Wall’s Brandon Gillichbauer, while his clean voice touches on a mixture of Mike Vernnart and Trent Reznor. The instrumentals and production are heavily inspired by a lot of big players in the scene today, like 3TEETH and HEALTH’s most recent records, as well as the more experimental numbers lending from Black Light Burns, and “Everything’s Point of Origin” being a love letter to bands like Skinny Puppy and Ministry. At the minute, my description of King Yosef and this album reads very much like he is an imitator, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. What King Yosef does here is he takes all of those inspirations and creates an extremely effective, no-nonsense experience that showcases his brutality and chops as a contemporary industrial artist in the first half of the LP, while spending the second half of the record sending you down a capricious road filled with disquieting, spacey atmospheres one minute and pummelling blast beats the next. In a lot of ways, the second half of the album is very much in line with The Callous Daoboys’ gambit, in terms of the songwriting having this unpredictable, schizophrenic disposition to it.
At thirty-six minutes,
Spire of Fear is a powerhouse record with a methodical pacing, engaging songwriting that isn’t as radical as
I Don't Want to See You in Heaven, but it’ll certainly keep you guessing on where it’s going next, and a nice array of vocal approaches to maintain the momentum and have it all sounding fresh. Overall, King Yosef has essentially taken elements from a lot of my favourite artists in the industrial scene and carved out a space for himself. If you’re a fan of any of the aforementioned bands in this review, give
Spire of Fear a go as it won’t disappoint. The bleak, ethereal atmosphere, colossal breakdowns and shreddy Ministry-esque guitars are sure to elate fans of this style of music, but his contemporary spin makes King Yosef one to watch out for in the future, too.
