Stream: King Shelter, ‘Blue Pigz’

Kevin Bronson on February 28th, 2018

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The latest singles from Orange County-bred quartet King Shelter come at you like an action movie — monster hooks, pyrotechnic guitars and gritty bombast not unlike the effects you saw in last summer’s blockbuster hit, but rearranged in a way that still accelerates the pulse. The new music has teeth and claws (that’s “Teeth and Claws,” the second track). There are rants about life’s mundane choices (“Pick Your Poison”). And in the blurry messages of the in-your-face single “Blue Pigz” (out Friday), there’s a reveal bit about frontman Taylor Hecock, who formed the band in 2014 in La Mirada with guitarist David Noble and bassist John Harzan. “I got crazy in my blood / Don’t forget this face,” Hecock spits in a Beastie Boys-like break. This leads into a massively emo chorus about life and death, the point of which, the songwriter says, is “to let every individual know that I am interested not only in spending life with them, but death as well — if they’re willing to be my friend.”

The trio of songs are the first three on King Shelter’s eight-song debut album, “$hame,” which comes out March 30 via Broken Entertainment. It’s the follow-up to King Shelter’s EP “Failure,” which came out in 2015 and was re-released last year.

||| Stream: “Blue Pigz”