The Virginmarys’ King of Conflict is superb. Not only for it’s strong production and musicianship, but because it’s absolutely consistent in quality from start to finish. The UK-based band’s debut to America speaks volume about the new band. If more people turn it up in 2013, then this band is destined for greatness.
From Macclesfield, UK, the Virginmary’s have an old meets new sound. It’s kind of like Wolfmother, if Wolfmother had a song featured in a James Bond title sequence. It’s rock, and the best rock that’s been made in some time, but there’s a strong flavor for the dramatic too. Sometimes overly so, but most of the time to the point.
Ally Dickaty sings wonderfully for the group, and he fronts the Virginmarys with perfection and style. The biggest compliment that one can give Dickaty is his ability as a true performer. The iTunes version and some of the other versions feature some stripped-down acoustic tracks to go along with the fully produced full band songs. Listening to two different versions of each song, they’re each notably different from each other with the same core. But Dickaty doesn’t sound like the same vocalist either time. They’re noticeably different vocals on each song and it speaks loads about his range as a performer.
King of Conflict has a lot of consistency to it but it’s got a lot of variety to it too. Maybe the songs sound a lot like each other in parts, but there’s not a band running in the mainstream that sounds like these guys do. They’re firmly rooted in a ton of different influences and you can hear that within their music. You absolutely can’t go wrong with this album- it’s awesome.