Kingdom Come
Too

The pitch-black cover, in the style of "Metallica" and "Back In Black" (AC/DC), two respective classics of heavy metal and hard rock, introduces the eighth work of Kingdom Come, a group or rather a project by composer, guitarist, singer, and producer Lenny Wolf from Hamburg, Germany, released in the year 2000.

The musical genre to which "Too" belongs can be defined as halfway between the two just-mentioned commercial titans: less angry and distorted compared to the approach of the four Californian metalheads, darker and more melodic compared to the dry style invented and maintained for life by the five Anglo-Australian rockers. Tastes are tastes, and my personal one undoubtedly leads me to prefer, by far, the music of this neglected black album to those of the other two illustrious counterparts (especially that of Metallica).

"It Ain't So Bad" opens with a wavering keyboard absolution, only to bombard with guitars, all with magnificent and precisely distorted sounds, beautifully grainy and present. Immediately in the foreground are Wolf's specific melodic and rhythmic inclinations: a powerful and preferably slow groove, at most mid-tempo, à la John Bonham in short; above this mighty push acts a back-and-forth of rhythm guitars of different kinds, in a drastic and very Austrian "changing of the guard" game (usually at the arrival of the bridge or chorus). The leader's voice, melancholic and feline and then shrill and penetrating in the refrains, in an anxious Robert Plant style, launches the first of his eleven chants, directing the work's pathos toward a constant and oblique tension, further accentuated in the following "Free Your Mind", characterized by a continuous overlap of riffs.

"Waiting" is a true chant, structured on a sparse piano that is swept away by the bulging keyboards of the super cool refrain, almost industrial but... sweet. The solo is equally pompous with harmonized orchestral guitars, but then everything dissolves and returns to the spectral progression of the piano under Lenny's disheartening and "waiting" voice.

"Too Late" also lives on a cyclopic riff, which surprisingly modulates full of grace and melody. Wolf personally harmonizes the second verse, but reserves the most beautiful thing for the third. With a beautiful electronic effect, of rare depth, that embellishes the rhythm.

After so much Wagnerian certainty, a semi-acoustic ballad comes just at the right time, and here is "You're My Secret". Superb acoustic guitar treated with strange compression, Plant-like timbre in "I'm Gonna Crawl", a fabulous chord sequence, highlighted by a liquid keyboard and an electric guitar passed through a perfect leslie and delay effect.

In "Hey Man", hypnotic vibratos bouncing between the two channels set the usual slow and dramatic groove in motion, without being elephantine. Just for a change, a drastic change occurs between verses and chorus, shifting the atmosphere towards more compact and "obtuse" horizons.

Rock blues riff with three guitars and unison bass for "Tease". When the voice arrives, only a little guitar remains to harmonize, but then in the bridge, its big sister arrives, arranged with an exciting wah-wah, arpeggiating in a surprising way. Everything gets exposed to the flanger, even the singer's voice. Everything sounds great, so this piece has its acme right in the bridge, which is a rare thing to happen.

"Mighty Old Man" is less prominent, with its initial raw and naked Metallica-style arpeggio, usually sidelined after the verse in favor of a highly melodic and poignant chorus. The guitar solo is very scholastic and short, it must be by Wolf himself, leading to the final tail enriched with electronically charged voices full of vibrato.

Another beastly riff is placed at the beginning of "Tell What I've Done", ready as always to disappear immediately when it's time to sing. Then other guitars arrive, one buzzing with a fuzz distortion and then the hard rock ones for a solid and rigorous German-style chorus. What a piece! This is how you play hard and pure rock, maximally Anglo-Saxon. The solo is on the same riff of the beginning, coated with terrifying wah-wah.

"Should I've Told You" moves more sprightly, with a bass pedal marking the eighth notes, on which a clean, resonant guitar and a sharp, worrying keyboard enter. In the chorus, a tubular bell on the offbeat adds further anxiety and welcomes the return of the verses like a liberation, with their reassuring little guitar, which in the bridge is devoured alive by a chorus set at 100 cents, without mercy.

"Joe English" is a fantastic finale: crashing cymbals, frenetic voices as a prologue to a tight shuffle with a full guitar solo fanfare. As usual, the musical panorama empties like a bucket of water over your head upon the arrival of the singing, which at each chord change provides to abruptly change the accompaniment guitars, up to the disorienting refrain with the lead guitar melody on top.

For the record, three of the eleven tracks, specifically the fourth, seventh, and tenth, are recycled from the repertoire of Stone Fury, Lenny Wolf's youth group put together as soon as he emigrated to Los Angeles.