KING NUN
First catching our eye as eager teens, have taken their time and played the long game. The result? Debut album ‘MASS’: a darker, more mature move than any early adopters could have guessed. Words: Elly Watson. Photos: Emma Swann.
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here’s a point during any classic coming-of-age film when everything falls into place. A big, definitive moment that harnesses the journey so far and makes it all worthwhile. Judd Nelson’s triumphant air punch as Simple Minds’ ‘Don’t You Forget (About Me)’ chimes in at the end of The Breakfast Club; John Cusack holding a boombox above his head in the climactic final moments of Say Anything. It doesn’t always have to be the grandest of scenes, but it has to be hard-fought and it usually contains a fucking good soundtrack. It’s a well-thumbed narrative that might normally root itself on the big screen but, for Londoners King Nun, it’s one that’s finally coming into view, too. After nearly three years of rumbling buzz and drip-fed releases, this month the quartet are finally dropping long-awaited full length debut album ‘MASS’; having first emerged as eager teenagers, now they’re ready to begin the next chapter. First getting together over six and a half years ago, the group - made up of vocalist Theo Polyzoides, bassist Nathan Gane, guitarist James Upton and drummer Caius Stockley-Young - have done a lot of growing up, both musically and personally, since those early movements. Their first official song, 2016’s ‘Tulip’, was rife with teenage angst and raucous punk - traits that continued through their following singles up to last year’s EP ‘I Have Love’. “I think at first we wanted to make really fast, very loud, very aggressive music, and then as things went on, we’ve learnt to refine that so it’s more tangible,” Theo explains. “We’ve learnt a lot about the things we want to express and that’s what we’ve really tried to do with this album. We’ve tried to get that same punk response, [but] by using different kinds of songs.” Their new slant is evident right from the get-go in the album’s lead single, ‘Black Tree’. Evolving from the young, inexperienced scamps creating facemelting punk that established them as Dirty Hit’s resident gnarly group, the first cut from ‘MASS’ instead showed a completely different side to the quartet. Delivering a sizzling, cinematic slowburner, full of dark imagery and a sense of foreboding, it marked not only a sonic
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change but a starkly heightened maturity from the band. “We were taking a chance doing a really slow, symphonic song as the first single,” discloses Theo. “When we release stuff, people usually want us to do the really fast punky stuff. And that’s still represented on the album, but the first single is a bit of a curveball. We led with it to set the mood. That song is really indicative of a lot of what’s going on [in the record].”
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n introduction to the narrative ideas that run through the album, ‘Black Tree’ welcomes in a sense of darkness that writes its way across ‘MASS’’s sermon. Whereas previously, the band had tried to use their material to convey an optimistic message about how punk can be a force for good, this time around, King Nun allowed their thematic scope to widen. With emotions flowing out naturally, they found themselves writing brutally honest, autobiographical stories about the hardships that they were experiencing and the highs and lows of growing up. “We’re not hiding behind anything on this album,” Nathan states. Nodding, Theo elaborates: “As we were making it, we were in a really dark place. There were several things that were happening across all of our lives that were really inescapable and, honestly, quite horrific, so we couldn’t really hide that.”
