Malkovich - Kings 'n' Bosses

by Paul Raven

published: 7 / 5 / 2007

Label: Go Kart Records
Format: CD

Party-time pop-metal with an undercurrent of intelligence from lunatic Dutch group Malkovich

Review

Okay, so here's the deal: the world is screwed. Seriously – lying politicians; Big Brother surveillance societies; unwinnable wars against abstract nouns. Life's a crock. So what are we going to do about it? As far as Dutch nutcases Malkovich are concerned, what we're going to do is party. Party hard – and loud, and drunkenly. Shut out the clamour of a world gone wrong with the crunch of loud guitars, jump around like idiots and hope it's all still there when we re-open the venue doors at 5am. They've been compared to one-album wonder Andrew WK a number of times, but there's a little more depth to Malkovich than that. 'Kings 'n' Bosses' features twelve songs (numbered, not named) that draw on a wide range of heavy guitar-music styles while adding some pinches of extra flavour from sources as wide as Euro-folk and gabba techno. It's loud, hectic, and in some places quite silly (in a grin-at-the-funny kind of way), and the overall impression is that of a rock and roll band who've been locked in a recording studio with a bar and a huge supply of recreational chemicals for a year or two. But beneath the nihilistic hedonism of the songs lies a certain intelligence. Malkovitch's dismissal of the world outside the edges of the CD says a lot more than some bands manage to get across when writing directly about the things that upset them. Instead of raging against the machine, they've turned their backs to it, and as such seem to present a punk-rock attitude that's miles more authentic than the designer labels and haircuts that parade behind the glass of your television screens. Of course, I may have read them entirely wrong – and it would be more than possible to take 'Kings 'n' Bosses' as a pure party-time pop-metal album, because it works as one more than adequately. But I remain convinced there's something more going on beyond the surface – even though the band themselves would probably tell me to stop thinking about it and head for the bar.