Canadian-American rock outfit REDLIGHT KING are back with a new album titled “In Our Blood” packing 11 groovy anthemic modern hard rockers. You can say REDLIGHT KING are a North American sounding band having toured with the likes of Shinedown or Halestorm, with their music featured in ESPN, NASCAR, NFL, CFL, NHL, NBA, etc.
However, they have chosen German rock/metal label AFM Records for the release of “In Our Blood”: the band looks a proper European distribution as they want to conquer Europe. And they have the chops; the songs on the new album are around the concise 3-minute mark, effective, instant rockers.
Rock n’ roll is in our blood, and for Ontario born Mark “Kaz” Kasprzyk, that blood is hot, it is raging with fire, and on each track of his band new album it is a fluid of extraordinary persuasion.
With a steadily-growing appetite for giving voice to his modern rock inspirations, he formed Redlight King in 2008. The name refers to two of his great passions — cars and drag racing, which he explained, are family traditions.
With long-time friend and collaborator guitarist Julian Tomarin, Kasprzyk has built Redlight King into a stridently modern rock band whose music has spent considerable time on the Billboard charts, including multiple top ten appearances. It was ‘Old Man’ — his re-imagination of the enduring Neil Young classic, where he tells a story about his own father while sampling the original — that catapulted him onto the international scene. Redlight King would release the album Something For The Pain (2011), followed with Irons In The Fire (2013), Helldiver EP (2015) and Moonshine (2020), both of which expanded the band’s vision, pushing the sound deep into the heart of mainstream hard rock.
What separates ”In Our Blood” from so much of mainstream rock today is an unguarded sense of optimism. These are challenging, complex themes, yet running through all eleven tracks is a defiant undercurrent of hope. It comes across loudly in the title track, an absolute haymaker with mighty hooks and a towering chorus. Elsewhere, on lyrically-poignant cuts like ‘Paid Off’ and ‘Evil Lies’, he takes aim at political hypocrisy and the erosion of truth in today’s divisive landscape.
For a double dose of driving riffs and searing bluesy rock vibes, ‘King Again’ and ‘Eye Of A Hurricane’, pair turbocharged tempos with some of the vocalist’s most personal lyrics yet. ‘Heavy Heart’, written after losing his marriage, is a captivating slice of balladry, rendered in lush melodic textures, and closer ‘My Execution’ considers the perspective of a man making his final steps towards his last moment on earth.
Producing nearly all of the tracks himself, he explained that the journey of ”In Our Blood” was more personal and challenging than anything he’d worked on before.
This is an album founded on twin loves, both cultures, that of the Californian easy-going charm and the Ontario industrial furnace, and they meld, merge together with a strong delivery.
Highly Recommended
01 – Cold Killer
02 – In Our Blood
03 – King Again
04 – Eye of a Hurricane
05 – Heavy Heart
06 – Raise the Dead
07 – Paid Off
08 – End of a Shotgun
09 – Evil Lies
10 – Do You Wanna Live
11 – My Execution
Mark “Kaz” Kasprzyk – vocals
Julian Tomarin – guitars
Brian Weever – bass
Randy Cooke, Mark Goodwin – drums