Bear with, and indulge me if you will – I want to start this review with a bit of perspective. The beauty of having different musical backgrounds is that you interpret music based on your personal audio upbringing. To give you an example – in a band and I was in, I would write something on the guitar that made me think of Government Issue or Scream. If I played it to our drummer (who had never heard of those bands) he would liken it to something like Big Country.

Where am I going with this? Okay, this is the first time that I’ve bumped into Kungens Män and I have no idea what their history is, or who their musical peers are. I quite like listening to something “blind” as it doesn’t influence your perception. I am super glad I took the plunge.

This is a beautiful album of instrumental soundscapes that take you on a journey. A floating passage through time, carried by riffs that roll round and round, building musical layers as they go. Beyond the usual guitar/ bass/ drums, there are keyboards and saxophones in the mix, and that pushes the sound into all sorts of other-worldly dimensions.

I have no idea what has inspired them to build this very unique sound – I am guessing that kraut-rock, post-rock, and psychedelia have played their part. To my ears that are relatively unexposed to those worlds, I’m hearing touches of Tortoise, Voivod, Goblin or Van De Graaf Generator, but I do urge you to take a dive into this and make your own mind up – you won’t regret it. Tom Chapman