Album Reviews,  Music

Kentucky’s Knocked Loose Delivers A Brutal Masterpiece With ‘A Different Shade Of Blue’

Knocked Loose is a band from Oldham County, right outside of Louisville, Kentucky. They play a blend of hardcore and metalcore music. They’ve recently released their sophomore album,’A Different Shade of Blue”, and it’s no slump. It hits hard and heavy and it’s excellent.

I caught Knocked Loose a couple years ago by accident. I had driven up to Louisville from Bowling Green to catch Every Time I Die on their Low Teens tour. They were playing at a venue that I wasn’t familiar with, with bands I wasn’t familiar with; I’d heard the name Knocked Loose, but it had only been in passing. You can only imagine my surprise when Knocked Loose took the stage and erupted chaos into the crowd.

Their hometown turnout was a slew of nonstop stage-diving, moshing, and crowd-surfing fans throughout the entire set. Color me a hundred different shades of impressed.

Knocked Loose delivers every bit of their live show into recorded bliss on ‘A Different Shade of Blue.’ It sustains a heavy vibe that packs a punch throughout the record.

Opening tracks “Belleville” and “Trapped in the Grasp of a Memory” set the tone early. It’s a dark record, not only in the literal sounds of the music but lyrically as well. ‘A Different Shade of Blue’ casts themes of loss and loneliness in each of the album’s twelve songs.

The middle of the record is where everything seems to come together. “In The Walls” in a whole different kind of heavy between the deep bass riffs and the sound-clip of the murder filled newscast at the end of the track.

“Guided by the Moon” features a very doom-metal-like riff as vocalist Bryan Garris screams out the title lyric, “This is a different shade of blue.” It’s probably my favorite track on the record. The imagery behind the lyric “I have a bone to pick with Death / He still follows me around” is so vivid as the track closes.

“Mistakes Like Fractures” has some of my favorite guitar parts on the album. Isaac Hale slings a thrashy riff throughout. Pair this with a heavy heavy breakdown during the chorus and you have another standout track.

I can’t leave out “Forget Your Name” either. After being exposed to Knocked Loose through an Every Time I Die set, you can imagine how I feel about Keith Buckley being featured on a track. “Forget Your Name” crushes all on its own, but the splash of Buckley’s voice right at the end is the perfect special ingredient. His unmistakable presence takes a great track and lifts it to another level.

‘A Different Shade of Blue’ ends the opening track “Belleville” with the lyric “I will hide from the spotlight” but a record like this is going to make that difficult for Knocked Loose. From beginning to end, ‘A Different Shade of Blue’ takes hardcore music to a different shade of heavy.

If you enjoy your music heavy and prefer a deeper lyrical approach, these Kentuckians should have your eyes and ears on them.