Every King Has A Clown – Every King Has A Clown
Every King Has A Clown – Every King Has A Clown
Cleopatra
Release Date: 30/01/26
Review by Jon Deaux
8.7/10
Oh, joy. Another power metal album. No, wait. Don’t all come at once. There’s only so much dragon-slaying and crowns-losing to go around. Because what the world really needs is more fantasy-themed posing, more vocals that could shatter the windows of a well-fortified cathedral, and more guitar solos that could be taken for a call to arms at a Renaissance Fayre or the coming of the Apocalypse. Or both. At the same time. With fireworks. And yet, what we have here is a level of wonderfully, magnificently insane that I can only praise in the highest terms that this particular genre is capable of. I mean, the man had looked out upon the landscape of the world and had seen the entirety of modern metal – every carefully posed photograph for Instagram, every carefully constructed social media presence, every band with more social media managers than actual songs – and had thought to himself, “You know what? I’m just going to do the thing.”
Men who make art instead of talking about possibly making art in the future. Provided, of course, that the social media trends are trending in the right direction and that Mercury is in the right position. Castro, a man who splits his time between Sweden and the Canary Islands like a tax exile with a suspiciously good tan, hadn’t bothered with all that. He’d just wanted to be in charge of his own music
“Every King Has a Clown”–the album, the project, the whole shebang–is just as in-your-face, just as self-indulgent, just as unwilling to apologize for its very existence as its title implies. He even gave his clown king mascot, EKHAC (for, like, you know, Every King Has a Clown, man, because acronyms are cool again, apparently) a crown to wear and a smile to wear on his face, because, you know, that’s what clown kings do. It’s a metaphor, man, for the eternal struggle between good and evil, light and dark, Sweden and the Canary Islands, and, you know, really important things like carbs and cardio. And you know what? If you’re going to do that, you do that, and Castro does.
The music is a bit of a mix of traditional power metal and a healthy dose of progressive thrown in for good measure. The song titles alone are enough to drive one to wonder if the fantasy section of their local bookstore has been converted into a musical. ‘Cimmerian Nights,’ ‘Victim Of The Night’, ‘BloodWar’, ‘The King Has Lost His Crown’ ‘Dragon’Just…Dragon. No explanation necessary, no context provided, just…’Dragon’. God bless. It’s like someone took a power metal script and tossed it in a blender, hit puree, and then tossed in six Red Bulls and blended that in too. It’s overblown, ridiculous, and, against all odds, effective.
The cherry on top of this sundae is that the songs were actually written by Ryker Castro himself. Twelve songs, to be exact. I mean, come on, steady on. It’s like the guy actually put the music first and the social media second. The songs are actually good, they have a great melody, a heavy sound that doesn’t fall into the trap of the drudgery of repetition, and they’re varied enough that the lineup of guest vocalists doesn’t fall into the “death by committee” syndrome and are cohesive enough to sound like a single work of art. This isn’t a collection of overambitious singles by a collection of all-stars; this is an album. What a concept.
And now the guest list. It’s either pure genius or completely insane, and we all know that, when it comes to metal, the line between the two can be measured by millimetres, much like the plot of most power metal concept albums. Ray Alder (Fates Warning), Mats Levén (Therion, Candlemass), Mark Boals (Yngwie Malmsteen), Mike DiMeo (ex-Riot), Göran Edman (ex-Yngwie Malmsteen), Steve Braun (Halycon Way), Berzan Önen (Deer From Space), Christian Palin (ex-Adagio), Fabio Alessandrini, Bastian Thusgaard (Soilwork). And breathe. Each and every one of them is like a new variety of metal royalty, and somehow, they all manage to avoid descending into a black hole of egocentric wailing and shrieking, and instead, they all manage to add something new and interesting to every single one of the songs.
There’s depth in ‘Revenge’ by Ray Alder, darkness in ‘Victim of the Night’ by Mats Leven, and then there’s the precision that’s so sharp, it could probably cut diamonds if he wanted to, in ‘Kill or be Killed’ by Mark Boals. Steve Braun and Berzan Önen, on the other hand, remind you that not all songs have to be an operatic wail-a-thon featuring all million vocalists, and sometimes, you just have to grit your teeth and remember that there’s hard rock in there too. They all bring something vital to the table, and yet, it doesn’t feel like it’s a hot mess, like too many chefs in the kitchen, and somehow, it does, in a weird way, work.
The rhythm section, featuring Fabio Alessandrini, who does a fantastic job of keeping it all together, and Bastian Thusgaard, who I’m sure, at some point, plays in time signatures that aren’t medieval banquet music, do a fantastic job of keeping it all together, and Tony Lindgren’s mastering work at Fascination Street Studios is a testament to the fact that everything is as clean as it is insane, so you can appreciate every double bass drum pattern, every operatic wail, and every guitar harmonic that could potentially rip a hole in a new dimension.
And speaking of the songs themselves, well… let’s talk about the lead single “Crucify Me.” It starts exactly as one would hope it would from the title. Bombast? Check. Subtlety? Forget it. Zero interest in subtlety? Check. In other words, this band has got it in spades and has no interest in pretending otherwise.
But then there’s ‘All We Need Is Rock And Roll’ which is either the most genuine song in the history of this genre or the most sarcastic or both or maybe both I don’t know and the thing is we may never know and the thing is we don’t need to know because the problem is what makes this band so great and the problem is the perfect storm of genuineness and sarcasm that makes this genre great and brings us all back again and again.
We don’t need another power metal album with dragons with blood wars with crowns with kingdoms no we don’t need that not after 1987 no we don’t need any of that does this power metal album have the right to exist in the world through the power of its execution through the complete and utter lack of cynicism on the part of its members through the audacity to celebrate the most ridiculous parts of this genre oh boy yes because it has a jester king mascot yes because it is ridiculous yes because it is over the top yes because it has Dragon.
And yet, it does. And it’s gloriously good fun. And a lot of it is actually good music too. We live in a world where no one has got time to be bothered making an album that people might actually want to listen to. *Every King Has A Clown* is a resounding exception in a world where people are too busy trying to win Twitter popularity contests to be bothered making an album people might actually enjoy. It’s a passion project of utterly ridiculous proportions and it’s been pulled off with a remarkably steady hand
There’s no meme to be had here. No algorithm gaming. No desperate attempt to game the social media landscape. Just twelve tracks of utterly sincere and gloriously camp power metal from people who know exactly what they’re doing and are doing it anyway. The jester grins. The king has lost his crown. The dragon presumably does what it will when it gets a track to itself.
God help us all. It actually works.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Crucify Me
02. Cimmerian Nights
03. Victim Of The Night feat. Mats Levén (Therion, Candlemass)
04. Higher
05. Hear Me Calling
06. Defender
07. Dancing In The Dark
08. BloodWar
09. All We Need Is Rock And Roll
10. The King Has Lost His Crown feat. Mark Boals (Yngwie Malmsteen)
11. Revenge feat. Ray Alder (Fates Warning)
12. Dragon
LINKS:
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