Kings of Leon - Walls (2016) [24bit FLAC]

  Genre: Rock
  Style: Alternative
  Source: WEB
  Codec: FLAC
  Bit rate: ~ 1,800
  Bit depth: 24
  Sample rate: 48 kHz

  01 Waste a Moment 
  02 Reverend 
  03 Around the World 
  04 Find Me 
  05 Over 
  06 Muchacho 
  07 Conversation Piece 
  08 Eyes on You 
  09 Wild 
  10 WALLS 

  It's easy to forget that when Kings of Leon broke through in 2008 with Only by the Night, they were already four albums deep into their career. Buoyed by the popularity of hits "Sex of Fire" and "Use Somebody," the Tennessee four-piece transformed from ragged, post-punk upstarts into arena-bait arbiters of anthemic, mainstream rock uplift, exposing their abiding love for U2 in the process. In some ways, the tonal shift made sense to a band poised to storm the awards stages next to similarly grand-minded acts like Coldplay and the Killers. It's a stance the band has assumed unflinchingly, if somewhat doggedly on subsequent albums like 2010's Come Around Sundown and 2013's Mechanical Bull. Although those albums had their brighter moments (the driving "Supersoaker"), there was a sense that just as KOL ascended to their rightful place in the post-U2 rock royalty, they became codified and predictable. On their seventh studio album, 2016's WALLS, Kings of Leon clearly attempt to crack the surface of that codified shell, hunkering down in Los Angeles with producer Markus Dravs (Florence + the Machine, Arcade Fire, Mumford & Sons), purportedly taking a looser, less critical approach to recording. The result is an album that does feel less claustrophobic than previous efforts, with a lean aesthetic that straddles the gaps between classic Tom Petty, '80s Fleetwood Mac, and more contemporary acts like Arcade Fire. It's a brief album, clocking ten songs in just over 40 minutes. There's also a handful of catchy, pulse-pounding cuts here like sanguinely ecstatic "Find Me" and the swaggeringly heavy-browed "Reverend," both of which find lead singer Caleb Followill retaining his position as the band's biggest asset; his emotive southern yawp rife with poetry and lyricism