
It’s important to know your audience, and just as important to confuse them once in a while. The audience of this website, hell, even the audience that tends to listen to alternative rock music, will likely be initially put off by the sound and look of Kin Crew. Still, I don’t think rap-rock is worth ignoring, especially not now, at a moment when guitar music is being given less coverage than it has since its difficult birth back in the 1950s.
“Die Tonight” is a track clearly owing a great deal of debt to Machine Gun Kelly’s recent foray into pop-punk, which included Youngblud and blink-182’s Travis Barker as collaborators. The sound is a modern produced hodgepodge of braggadocious rock and pop-punk. It’s a direction that has proven to be very successful, somewhat surprisingly, and which opened up MGK to a whole new audience.
Kin Crew, similarly, explores production facets more closely related to trap music than to rock. Lyrically “Die Tonight” spreads the drama of fearless, reckless youth. The heavily processed guitars act as a flavoursome morsel added to the final mix. The vocals are playful and commercial sounding.
While the songwriting and, even, the overall product shows the group has some way to travel before achieving their very best, we at Alt77 think it’s important to consider why guitar music had the power tickle the fancy of millions, and what modern styles are doing a similar thing right now. Right on!