Three years have passed since Kings of Leon released their album Mechanical Bull and it’s high time for a follow-up from the Followills. Walls, the band’s seventh studio album, is set to be released on October 14.
They’ve yet to release a single, only the incredibly vague teaser clip, above, that sheds very little light on what Walls might actually sound like. However, there is evidence that the album might be a step in a new direction for the band. Recorded in Hollywood as opposed to the friendly confines of Tennessee, the band worked with Markus Davis, who has previously produced albums for Coldplay, Florence + the Machine, Mumford and Sons and Arcade Fire.
Recording was kept mostly a secret, Caleb Followill, the band’s singer and guitarist, told Billboard so as to help take the pressure off themselves. They also felt the element of surprise might help the album cause a bigger ruckus when it drops in October. A bigger ruckus would definitely help things. Mechanical Bull sold only 347,000 copies, a drop from the 776,000 copies they sold of their 2010 album Come Around Sundown and a sky dive from the 2.5 million copies they moved for 2008’s Only by the Night .
Of course it helped that Only by the Night featured some of their most popular songs, mainly “Sex on Fire” and “Use Somebody.” Those numbers, in addition to turmoil within the band led to the severing ties with their long-time producer Angelo Petraglia, who had produced all six of their previous albums. Followill said they teamed up with Davis out in sunny California motivated by two LA staples:
“We said, ‘Let’s f–ing go to L.A., eat some sushi, get some sunshine. The whole thing just felt a lot more organic.”
It seems like a distant memory now, but when they came out in the early 2000s, Kings of Leon were a force to be reckoned with. They combined vintage rock ‘n roll swagger with dusty and dirty country music that resulted in a wild southern fried version of the Strokes that was appealing not just in the states, but across the Atlantic in the United Kingdom and Europe. Their sound evolved with their rising level of fame and ultimately, they may have flown just a bit too close to the sun. America needs rock bands right now and a return to form by the Followill brothers could definitely be a step in the right direction.
