It always feels like a holiday when Sullivan King drops new music, let alone a full EP. “Close the schools! Pack up for the day, we’re going home!” Except, I work from home and my job is literally to review music, so I can’t really complain when I get something like this in my inbox for the day.
Sullivan King is out today with his new EP The Demented on Kannibalen Records, and let’s just say I love it. There are some new styles in this, an acoustic of an old fan favorite, a fresh collaboration with Grabbitz — what more can you ask for??
The EP starts out with the title track, “The Demented,” which sees Sully trying his hand at midtempo for the first time. It’s definitely a bit jarring to hear midtempo in a Sullivan King style, but it’s better than him just hopping on a bandwagon. He definitely takes the genre into his own hands and molds it with guitar riffs and his own vocals; plus, there’s still plenty of rock to go around.
The Demented moves on with “Lie,” which retains some of the deep sound from the previous track, but ups the tempo a bit into a more electro house than midtempo rhythm. The structure of the song is also more indicative of traditional verse-chorus-verse than the build-drop-bridge of your normal EDM track.
Grabbitz and Sullivan King finally collaborate after years of friendship on “Show Stopper.” There are probably countless demos on their respective hard drives, but this is something truly worth putting out. Grabbitz bears his rapping chops on this one, which you might have seen live if you caught Sully’s set at HARD Summer. The track also has a showtunes style bridge that makes this one of Sullivan King’s most diverse and musically ambitious tunes yet. And last but not least, it ends with a phenomenal breakdown that really showcases Sully’s love of Avenged Sevenfold.
Finally, the EP ends on an acoustic rendition of his song “Don’t Care” from his House of Wolves EP in 2017. Nothing much to say about this one except that we love it.
Listen to the full EP below.
Photo via Rukes.com