KING GIANT: SOLACE

Down is good, Crowbar is good, Kyuss is good, but Virginia’s King Giant has become my go-to band for nasty, sludgy, whiskey-soaked Southern doom ‘n roll.

Last September, I stumbled across a King Giant video for a song called “13 to 1” from their self-released 2009 album, Southern Darkness and included it in one of our MISCELLANY posts. That song is heavy and dirty and bluesy — slow and nasty, with sourmash-soaked vocals and big, rounded, beautiful guitar tones, not to mention the unusual tinkling of a banjo during the first 45 seconds. Very cool shit, and the video was a kick to watch, too.

Well, King Giant has just released a video for yet another song from Southern Darkness, called “Solace”. It’s a performance-based clip filmed at a Washington, DC joint called the 9:30 Club — a place of significance for this band. And guess what? It’s another cool video for another hot-shit song. (more after the jump, including the video . . .)

It may help to be from the South or the border States to fully appreciate this band, but it’s not necessary. All you need is a functioning brain stem, a warm feeling for fuzz-drenched, gut-busting, hook-laden riffage, an appreciation for scorching guitar solos — and a willingness to let yourself be dragged by the ankles behind a smoking pick-up over an Appalachian back road turned to deep muck by a torrent from dark skies. Figuratively speaking, of course.

It may also help if you’re on the “mature” end of metal fandom, because the dudes in this band have been around, they’ve paid some dues, and they sing about the rougher, darker side of real life. What they’ve been through — including the loss of their original lead singer Bob Dotolo, Jr., who killed himself in 2007 — comes through in the music.

King Giant have got shitloads of soul and an innate feel for this kind of Southern-fried doom, and Southern Darkness is loaded with powerful, heavy-ass songs. We’re happy to report that the band is in pre-production for their next album — to be called Dismal Hollow — and will start recording in March for a planned release during the summer.

In the meantime, here’s the new video for “Solace”:

And in case you missed it, here’s King Giant’s video for “13 to 1”:

For more info about King Giant’s history, read this article that was published not long after Bob Dotolo’s suicide. In addition, their MySpace page is here and the band’s official web site is at this location. Here’s their ReverbNation widget so you can hear more tunes from Southern Darkness: