GG King: Remain Intact 12″

Description

Our take:Remain Intactis the 3rd full-length from this Atlanta band. Heres the quick rundown on GG King: while hes played in projects going back to the 90s, I came to know Atlantas Greg King as the singer for Carbonas, for my money one of the best punk bands ever to come out of the American south. In Carbonas, Greg honed his pop chops to a razor sharp edge (though not without punk intensity I remember when Carbonas second LP came out everyone was talking about how much it sounded like Zero Boys), but when Carbonas dissolved in the late 00s and Greg started GG King, the sound was a little different. (Well, at least after the first few GG King singles, which someone once told me were largely songs written for Carbonas). One big change was a prominent black metal influence, which is not something one thinks of as a natural fit with the upbeat, song-oriented punk that also informed GG Kings sound. Even beyond that jarring stylistic juxtaposition, GG King felt looser and artier, wide-open to lots of different styles, and every few years they would weave a bunch of these threads into an eclectic tapestry of an album. Which brings us toRemain Intact, which strikes me as GG Kings masterpiece. I loveLOVE!GG Kings first two albums and the singles, butRemain Intactone-ups them. The melodic songs like Remain Intact and Melt on You are among the bands best songs, while the other songseverything from the 00s-era-Fall-ish Dekalb County Endless to the brooding Cul de Sac to whatever the fuck Golden Horde Rising is (Norwegian black metal meets early Magazine?)make the album feel epic in scope and are often great art-punk songs in their own right. Its rare that a current band releases something that feels as ambitious and as important as albums like WiresChairs Missingor Guided by VoicesBee Thousand, but thats the vibe I get fromRemain Intact.

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Please Note: Due to shipping, some copies may have a bit of a dinged up corner. We apologize for any inconvenience.