We Stood Like Kings
Away

Belgian instrumental rockers who stood like kings, that is what we are checking out today. It is their fifth album called Away, that like several of their prior albums is based on a movie. In this case it is a silent animated movie by a Latvian director. The cover is pretty cool, not fantastic but eye-catching. It seems like they mostly like to rework things, like doing new soundtracks to silent movies, or like in the latest album remake some classical music. I don’t know whether or not I would call that a creative effort, but then again, most musicians aren’t particularly creative in their song-writing.

The piano is the driving force in the music of We Stood Like Kings and their post-rocking music style. The music is instrumental, it sounds much like soundtrack music with all the positive and negatives of that style. There isn’t much that really draws you into it, the challenge is to channel the story in the mind when listening – or watch the movie with the music of We Stood Like Kings instead of the original soundtrack. It is fun that all the tracks have titles that are one word, and the story goes from Parachute to Airplane, through Elephant, Turtle, and Llama.

Away is a nice album to listen to, the songs are flowing fine, and they allow the thoughts to flow freely. But it is not an album that draws me in, more like something to have in the background when doing something else, and it is not the greatest driving music as I like something more up-tempo for that. It is not an easy album to say much about, it doesn’t make a massive impression, and I don’t find it a particularly memorable album. Perhaps it is more appealing to the fans of the instrumental post-rockers, or soundtrack fans.

In the end I find Away to be a fine album, not much to complain about with it. It is fine to listen to, fans of the genre should have a look at it, but I don’t think it is an album that will have very wide appeal. The Belgians probably would have made a bigger impact if they were more adventurous, but when you are making soundtracks you are limited by the story you make the soundtrack for, and for a music album that can be a problem but it is probably great together with the movie that it is a newly interpreted soundtrack for.

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