Label: Avispa Music 2013
Review by Kimmo Toivonen
Earlier this year we did an interview with Burning Kingdom main man Manuel Seoane. He had assembled a new band featuring three Swedish musicians and the one and only Danny Vaughn of Tyketto on lead vocals, and was pretty excited over this new album. He had every reason to be, as he and the band have succeeded in recording a very good album.
”Simplified” is a good title for the album. It’s a bit rough around the edges, the production isn’t as smooth and polished as some other releases, but in a way that gives it a warm and ”human” sound. Vaughn’s vocals sound really live, it sounds like they haven’t been filtered or autotuned to match ”modern day production values”, which is actually a good thing.
Speaking of ”modern day production values”, I must mention the intro ”Stay Awake”. Apparently it was put together by the producer, and the band had nothing to do with it. They actually asked it to be removed, but in the end the label decided to use it, bcause ”valuable studio time had been spent on it”. That’s pretty crazy, as it doesn’t suit the album at all, featuring electronic sounds and spoken words (or is that rapping?) with a bad accent… when I heard it I thought I had put a wrong CD into the player!
The actual Burning Kingdom music on the album is something altogether different. Tyketto fans will find a lot to enjoy, even though some of the tracks are slightly more metallic with Seoane throwing in some really wicked riffs. Some of the best songs for my money are the first single ”Watching As It Burns”, the melodic and quite Tykettoesque ”From On High” and the keyboard-heavy title-track. ”That’s My Boogie” is probably the weakest of them, confirming again that if there’s a ”Boogie” in the songtitle, then I cannot possibly like it… strange but true.
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