This first album by Vanquished Kingdom makes heavy metal music not only palatable but enthralling for all. It does this by combining the relentless joy, energy, depth and power of the 1980s' best fist-pumping, head-banging heavy metal stylings with a brand new, fresh and unique modern relevance in both the music and lyrics.

Newcomers to this kind of music, how should Vanquished Kingdom be listened to? Two pieces of advice:

1. Overall, remember that this music is fun and meant to bring joy, just like most music. Sometimes you get there therapeutically via intensity or anger. Enjoy having even dark reflections expressed in a powerful, pleasurable way. People who acknowledge what's wrong with the world tend to be happier. As do people who have music they can really stamp their feet to!

2. Listen to this music at times that most mirror it. In other words, this music is strong, relentless, reflective, angry, energetic. So, listen to it when you feel or need to express those things. When you're upset, at the gym, or wherever you think it could enhance what you're doing and/or how you're feeling... turn it up!

Press "more" for extra info about the album: its conception and content

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Vanquished Kingdom formed in October 2016. After performing similar sets live regularly, something of a track listing began to take shape. By April 2018, recording began. The album was finished in October 2018 - recorded, edited, mixed and mastered by Van Leucia at his studio in Canley Vale, Sydney. It represents the 11 songs Vanquished Kingdom have played live, which hadn't already been recorded and fit into the style.

The band’s motto remains, as it has been since they started, “This band is purely and only about having fun and nothing else… oh and changing the world.” They try to keep their tongue in their cheeks, filled with humour and hope even as they rail against and wail about the brokenness of humanity.

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Vanquished Kingdom is an appropriate name for the band and this album as it sums up their themes. Many of this album's songs centre around the brokenness of the world across generations from many angles. Still, glimmers of hope sometimes flash through the cracks of destruction, decay and death.

The album opens with two songs about general ominous existential crises, followed by a lowly but lethal perspective of danger and death. Suddenly, it's a bird's-eye-view of the world and human history, followed by a (strangely easy-listening) whirlwind tour of chaotic glimpses of specific chaotic events:
The death by dingo of baby Azaria in 1980.
(The brief reprieve of an exhilarating fictional death-race!)
The destruction of the ancient city of Nineveh, in 612 BC.
The scandalous leak that reminded the world of the depths of human greed in 2016.
The tyrannies of Joseph Stalin and (Adolf Hitler) in 1917 and 1934-, (1941) until his death in 1953.

What could there be left do to, then, but play live music that helps to express oneself and to ask the question of humanity, "Will it ever be built up again?" The album closes in an anthemic chorus of a paradoxical redemption that means that the vanquished kingdom may rise again.

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Musically, the album follows many great traits of the best of 1980s hard rock and heavy metal. The "twin-axe attack", riff-heavy tunes, compulsory guitar solo(s), galloping rhythms, much of the harmony, and emphasis on melody are all examples of this.

The songs are all in keys based on open strings of a guitar: Em (5), Am (4), Dm (1) and Bm (1). A distinctive feature is the lower vocal range of baritone, as opposed to the wailing high tenor of many 80s metal bands. While a number of sound effects come into play, there is very little added to the core, raw, pure sounds of the vocals, guitars and drums.