You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

At first your foot begins to tap, then the pace quickens as those feet pound the floor in joyous celebration. Yep, that’s the way Californians Kyng roll on their second album.

The core of the sound is somewhere between Queens Of The Stone Age and Soundgarden, but the band also throw in some quickfire Sabbath and Monster Magnet moments, as well as the occasional guitar lick that owes something to Jimmy Page.

But, while this might come across as disparate and perhaps slightly unfocused, this is far from the truth, because Burn The Serum is stacked with the sort of songs that cascade with a rich individuality. The staccato thrust of Sewn Shut and the early 70s anthemic American hard rock of Electric Halo are merely the tip of the pile.

Dig deeper, and Faraway has the sniff of Rival Sons, but with a more brutal edge, while In The Land Of Pigs is almost a reinterpretation of Children Of The Grave and Paper Heart Rose has an eerie sensitivity.

Burn The Serum is an absorbingly creative, battle-hardened modern album.

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021.