Palace Of The King – Get Right With Your Maker

Picture some crime thriller movie where there’s a scene taking place in a strip joint. That’s how the first couple of bars of ‘I Am the Storm’ start out. After that it’s a different kettle of fish with screaming psychedelic rock with a vocalist who sounds like a tired and weary Steve Marriott fronting The Black Crowes singing over the top. At four minutes things change again and we get a suitable pastiche of The Doors’ ‘Riders On The Storm’ mixing it up with Zep’s ‘No Quarter’, before returning to its prior psych-rock vein until the we’re seven minutes down the road.

Thereafter the strutting Stones/Aerosmith barrage of It’s Been A Long Time’ and the hook-laden ‘Horizon’ are probably the most mainstream rock numbers on Palace Of The King’s Get Right With Your Maker. Elsewhere there are less psychedelic wanderings than one presumed and more funk chops laid out over Crowes style grooves.

‘Sold Me Down The River’ adds Afro-rhythms for an off beat rocker that’s a little Red Hot Chilli Peppers meets Funkadelic with a bit of metal riffing thrown in. While there’s an early 70s Sly & The Family Stone or Rare Earth vibe to ‘Dog With A Bone’ but what you really pick up on are that oddball lyrics abound with Palace Of The King  as do song titles – In fact one begins to get the impression they think up a title then devise a song to go round it. In the case of this one, the innuendo in its titles is well placed.

Another example of where this madness all converges is ‘Said The Spider To The Bird’. Organ and slide guitar drift in on a funky Crowes/early Aerosmith groove that’s all mouth and silk flared trousers for one well weird pick-up song, with a suitably spidery web-weaving guitar solo delicately held in place. Compare that to ‘Move Through The Fire’  that’s Sabbath’s ‘Sweet Leaf’ reimagined as strutting funk and ‘The Serpent’ where there’s fuzzy skuzzing with humour following a psyched keyboard intro.

Those high-end vocals tend to stand out and as you listen more, they’re maybe a little less Marriott and more Michael Des Barres (Silverhead, Detective etc) as they edge towards rock rather than soul-shouting blues. Either way they’re given free reign on ‘Fly Like An Evil’ that’s heavy offbeat reggae/funk metal with a touch of acid rock-era Zappa  and ‘Back On My Feet Again’ whereupon his happy demeanour turns angry. It opens with a surging rise as drums kick out, breaks down for slow atmospherics then builds again with a guitar squiggling away through to the song’s conclusion. And, you think that’s it, but then along comes a surprise county-flavoured bonus track. Which only goes to show Get Right With Your Maker is full of surprises to the very end.

Charmingly idiosyncratic while possessing some really good sounds.