Album Review: KID DAD - 'In A Box'
Hailing from Paderborn, Germany, Kid Dad are something new. Their rather unique brand of metal — closer to some hybrid electro rock grunge than any typical style of metal — is hard hitting, leaning into piercing guitar wails and punchy riffs as much as it does the pounding, mosh-fuelling drums that can often drown out its companions. ‘In a Box’ is no exception, with an often eclectic mix of builders and ballads; screamers and softies.
From (), an eerie, electrical distortion- based intro that feels as if it should have Rod Serling narrating over the top, the album doesn’t hold back. The first ‘proper’ song, A Prison Unseen, is chock full of lead vocalist Marius Vieth’s electrifying vocals, with Marius perfectly balancing the need to scream, voice fuelled by some scarily raw anger during the explosive chorus, with the delicate yet immensely effective near feather-like strokes of the verse. His cathartic wails perfectly juxtapose the song’s idea of losing control; being in a mental prison of one’s own making, walls made from one’s own mind.
The overarching narrative only further deteriorates from here. In the ironically named Happy, Kid Dad explores ideas of domestic abuse; wanting to leave but being “afraid as hell/ Of being alone”. The track slowly gains in rage and fury to a crescendo of drums and screeching guitars, with Vieth’s vitriolic vocals hovering over them, awash with scathing sarcasm, screaming ‘how happy are you now’ as his sanity slowly starts to slip.
Each song builds on the last. In ‘Limbo’, Vieth’s vocals fluctuate between near sinister in their gentleness, to throat wrenching cries of emotion, with near discordant guitars echoing around your head with enough pressure to make you want to explode; meanwhile, ‘The Wish of Being Alone’ builds from a slithering whisper over a slow drum beat, to sheer catharsis as the desperation takes hold. Album closer ‘Live With It’ seems almost desolate in comparison, reflecting on the insecurity and paranoia that living ‘In a Box’ can lead to: your torture or your succour.
Marius describes it thusly: “‘In A Box’ is ambiguous: is the box your prison or your hiding place? Do you get claustrophobic when you think about sitting in a noiseless, random, dark box or do you even wish to be in such a place? People cannot be divided or sorted by this question. It is the moments, the feelings, the actions that make everyone react and feel differently. Torn between fear and longing, we tell each of you what we feel and how far-reaching those feelings are within this album.”
And boy do Kid Dad manage that. The song titles alone say as much: Naked Creatures, Your Alien, (I Wish I Was) On Fire.
The latter two are comfortably my highlights of the album, having had them alternating on near repeat the past few weeks. (I Wish I Was) On Fire isn’t the most diverse lyrically; for the most part, the chorus is simply made up for the words in the song title. But it’s the music that makes this. It is near cinematic in its sheer strength; emotional, heartbreaking, stirringly beautiful. They show Marius, Max, Michael and Yoshi at their best, as the song goes from great to better. The vocals range from deceptively quiet to throes of pure anguish, as the song builds and builds to a finale of perfection. Plus, the chorus is catchy as hell!
Alien is a lot faster with almost celestial, extraterrestrial guitar under Marius’s hauntingly soft vocals — until the chorus, which, for want of a better way to describe it, is thunderous. For a song about being an outsider, left with the ‘little creatures’ in your head, a ‘no one’ to yourself — to put it simply, ‘alone’ — it’s surprisingly fast paced, flitting from lilted vocals to tormented howls at the flip of a coin. It perfectly embodies the stoic outside, calm faced, that shelters the tortured, turbulent truth within, and it’s comfortably a stand out — though a stand out amidst a slew of other extraordinary tracks.
‘In a Box’, for all the simplicity of its name, is nothing but. It’s complex and, honestly, it’s brilliant. An incredible debut album from an incredible band.
Words by James O’Sullivan