Finding a welcoming home at Riot Season, Stockholmers Kungens Män‘s umpteenth LP, and their second album for the label, Hårt Som Ben (Hard As Bone) positively oozes out of the speakers, dripping with lysergic guitar sking and a stoner (post-)rocker’s earch for the had-nodding rhythmic chug. Channelling their illustrious Swedish forebears Träd, Gräs Och Stenar as much as the heady noodlings of fellow astral travellers from Manchester and Copenhagen to Köln, Osaka and Ohio, the sept set the controls for the edge of the skyline, tripping out on the ever-reliable foundations of guitar, drums and bass.
It’s a method that in these hands retains an energetic spark that bobs and ripples to the circadian groove. The title track throws in a froglike synth sound that evokes didgeridoos without descending into ethnodelic parody, heaving in on the metaphorical anchor to haul the group about from their steady path that could lead the unwary into heavy rock excess. Instead, Kungens Män let their tiller drift and the voyage take its own meandering route towards the sublime in the wake of the propulsive drums of “Evigetern”.
Here, there are underpinning guitars that pull gently at the heartstrings, bending them on a freefall curve to let the good times roll on, seemingly with not a care impinging on their recursively transported path to an eventual bliss-out conclusion. Drum machinery and a languid sense of relaxed funk is one such mode of travel, the flanged guitars held at the reflective ready while the groove consolidates its linear purpose into a steadfast repetition on “Måttanpassad Minneslucka”. Likewise, “Rose-Maries Bebis” takes its time, the tinkling bells and subtle bass warps not nearly as ominous as the title might indicate. But all this feels a little like so much warm-up and preparatory groundwork for the concluding thirteen minutes of “Patriakivet”, whose gathering drone undertow flows beneath the interlocking guitars as they patter back and forth among the rhythm section’s solidly delivered study in how to build a languid groove. By its conclusion, Kungens Män have seemingly lifted up the world on their collective musical shoulders, letting the cares of the mundane Earth fall away under their elegantly crafted spell; and sometimes, what more could be asked of an album than that?-Antron S Meister-
