Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
There are bands that you watch live and you just instinctively know they need, musically demand, to be on a bigger stage to get the full blown effect that their music requires. It is a sign of good things to come that if the sound can grab you by whatever means necessary, whether by brain, the soul or any other bodily function that drives the musical desire, then it requires to be heard in a setting that really gets deep down and dirty with appreciation, such is surely the fate that awaits Pontipridd’s Peasant’s King.
Like Liverpool’s Black Diamond who tore down the divide between outrageously and wonderfully loud and beautiful earthy delivery in 2014, Studio 2 reverberated, shook and vibrated in such a manner that Californians might have called for Emergency Services in preparation for several aftershocks, as Peasant’s King took to the stage. There was hammer blow after hammer blow of thumping, bleeding, squealing in righteous agony drum beat and the low blow of superb infamy attached to a blistering bass, was tempered like a beautiful lover calming the temper of annoyed giant, in the brinkmanship of stunning guitar and bursting anger of Welsh lyrical vocals.
It is not right to envy and feel jealous, it is perhaps the most futile and abject of emotions that humanity can sink to, it is certainly the most destructive, yet it cannot be helped but to be observed in the eyes of those who made their way down to Studio 2 and were of the of the heavier Rock persuasion, that they truly wanted to claim Peasant’s King as one of their own.
With tracks such as the opener Reflect, Promised Land, City Lights, the superb Nina Kupenda and the dramatic set closer Give A Little Love being performed with unabashed supremacy, the only nagging doubt that sat in the beating heart was that for once, the normally versatile Studio 2, was truly not big enough to cope with the blasting inferno of music coming off the stage.
Peasant’s King is an act in which Welsh pride comes to the fore; dramatic, insatiable in their delivery and immense in their presence, to be considered near musical perfection.
Peasant’s King returns to Liverpool to perform at The Cavern on May 24th.
Ian D. Hall