SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: ALTER BRIDGE – PAWNS & KINGS

Alter Bridge
Pawns & Kings
Napalm Records

After taking a year off which saw both Myles Kennedy and Mark Tremonti release solo records – Kennedy’s The Ides Of March and Tremonti’s Marching In Time and Mark Tremonti Sings Frank Sinatra – Alter Bridge has returned with Pawns & Kings. The band’s seventh studio album is their first collection of all new material since 2018 and follows 2020’s Walk The Sky 2.0 and captures the band at the top of their game with one of their heaviest albums to date.

Pawns & Kings opens with the absolutely explosive “This Is War”, a song that immediately kicks into overdrive with a wall of raw sound, punctuated by dissonant chords and haunting backing vocals before an absolute ripper of an opening riff comes in. “This Is War” hits like a sledgehammer to the side of the head with an anthem for a chorus and a shredder for a guitar solo. Alter Bridge, like always, sounds massive; however, “This Is War” also feels as though the band, as both songwriters and performers, are refreshed and hitting harder than ever. This is further demonstrated in the opening riff and building tone of the following track, “Dead Among The Living”, a slightly more melodic take that is equally as tenacious as the album’s opener. Between the one-two punch that is “This Is War” and “Dead Among The Living”, Pawns & Kings is a gripping album that will pull you in immediately.

This, however, is no surprise for long-time fans of Alter Bridge, especially after hearing the lead singles, “Silver Tongue” and the title track with the former being yet another blistering banger and “Pawns & Kings” acting as a climatic closing track for the album. Additionally, “Sin After Sin” may be their heaviest song on the album as the band pull a page from the Jerry Cantrell songbook with a flurry of haunting, dissonant, grungy, and grimy riffs to assemble a truly epic song. With nearly every song standing tall as a highlight that will leave you floored, the relentless bounce of “Holiday” and the progressive journey and compositional depth of “Fable Of The Silent Son” stand particularly high as powerful reminders that Alter Bridge is one of the greatest bands of the past two decades.

Pawns & Kings is, hands down, Alter Bridge’s strongest album in years and reflects a creative surge in the band’s songwriting as they double down on their heavier roots and rich melodicism as they further blur the lines between hard rock and metal in an effortless manner with a performance that is nothing short of stellar. In short, Pawns & Kings is a masterclass in both modern rock songwriting and performance where Kennedy and Tremonti have the audacity to make it look easy on what is perhaps their heaviest and most volatile release to date.

SPILL FEATURE: PAWNS & KINGS – A CONVERSATION WITH ALTER BRIDGE GUITARIST MARK TREMONTI

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