Premiere: Silver Talon’s “Kill All Kings” Summons the Ghost of Nevermore

I absolutely loved the video for Silver Talon’s recent single “As the World Burns,” a no-frills performance clip featuring a bunch of power metal hair farmer dorks doing their absolute best to look tough and cool inside an abandoned warehouse. The vigor and vim with which these six gentlemen approach this kind of metal, not a particularly “cool” sub-genre at the moment, is admirable.

So I jumped at the chance when the band asked if MetalSucks wanted to premiere their next song, “Kill All Kings.” It’s got chunky riffs, it hits hard, it’s “epic” (overused word in metal but so be it), and it’s at once hard-hitting and melodic, melancholy and uplifting. If a bunch of dudes from the distant future jumped into a time machine, transported themselves to the front row of a Nevermore show in 1999, got marooned in 2021 on the way home when their time machine broke down and decided to start a band, this is what it would sound like.

Guitarist Bryce R. VanHoosen comments of the song:

“Kill All Kings is an anthem dedicated to eliminating anything opposed to achieving one’s true will. It’s about rejecting the easy life of royal comfort (or the servitude of modern neo feudalism), and putting your neck on the line to embrace a life on your own terms. Not only that – it’s guaranteed to be stuck in your head for days. Who knew apostasy could be so much fun?”

Decadence and Decay comes out on May 21 via M-Theory Audio; pre-order here.