King Adora take their name from a giant dildo, owe absolutely nothing to Jeff Buckley and sing about the joys of doing The Nasty with female coppers. Comparisons to early Manics are unavoidable... Luckily, the musics just as bracing.
Select - October 2000
King Adora are presently on a mission to make the legendary trail of blood and spunk Placebo left behind them some years back look like a quiet night in a disused casualty department.
Rock Sound - August 2000
No encore - no need - 20 minutes was enough to see that King Adora can go all the way.
Sire on line @ Flapper and Firkin - 1st August 2000
A studio version of the track whose Evening Session version we fell in love with back in issue #350. We're not sure how offensive it is, but it's certainly more interesting than average, and anyway, we can't really bring ourselves to worry about it because we like the tune so much... We love the sheer energy that King Adora display on this record.
Big Isn't Beautiful - Record of the week - Tipsheet Magazine
King Adora are four, sneering, shape-throwing boys from Birmingham who’ve already charmed the pants off the Sesh team with their debut single 'Bionic', and a couple of terrific gigs too. Ones to watch.
Steve Lamacq - Radio 1 Evening Session
The best new band in Britain... Singer Matt Browne wields a voice capable of scraping Tom Waits with-a-nasty-cold lows and Thom Yorke post-hefty-kick-in-the-bollocks highs... In times like these, bands like King Adora shouldn't exist. That they do is a blessing.
Pop is love website - April 20th 2000
The Flapper & Firkin
King Adora are the first real band of the 21 century and in the absence of any other remotely interesting new British band,you can see why everyone's so excited about them.They rock man,cheesy riffs,snarly vocals and simple shout along choruses that require no IQ,no thought,no brain activity whatsoever.
They ve benefited tremendously from their first brace of gigs around the country ,tight ,professional and for anyone who remembers the slightly nerdish,smelly boy in the lumberjacket,MATT has incredibly metamorphosed into a bona fide pop star,all big lips ,make up and sneery,dirty eyes.He s like a teenager who has discovered sex for the first time and can t keep his hands off his dick for ten seconds but its not sex that Matt s discovered but the power of a record deal ,massive hype and a fawning music press.
Its the first time in years I ve heard a local band cheered onto the stage and KA open with the siren screaming silliness of "THE LAW" with its dumbfuck lyrics and sigue sigue sputnik campness.The rest of the set is equally aggressive in your face marketing ,like BOO .COM spending £ 600 000 per week on advertising with no worthwhile products to sell,BIONIC is the only tune worth mentioning,simply because it has a slight one squirming to get out amongst the testosterone frenzy of the rest of the set.
They finish with "asthmatic",another insipid rocker and leave the stage like all conquering heroes ,which they are,and as a local band with the press in their pockets and the chance of world domination,I m gonna get behind them and wish them luck,I don't think they have any songs to back up the hyperbole and with Mercury Records pushing them to run before they ve crawled,I doubt they 'll ever be given time to write the songs that will take them on from here,but that's the business as it stands today, Steve Lamacq is GOD and all bands get a couple of releases,a few tours and then unless they have the talent,foresight and management capable of guiding them onward,they re burnt out and on the scrap heap of false hopes and fake idols within a year.
Buy into KING ADORA like you d buy shares in a dot com start-up,in and out as fast as you can,make some money,get some kicks ,try not to get your fingers burnt,that s what the rest of the business is doing,pimps and their whores,its an old story but getting sadder to watch every year......
Rock Sound - June 2000
From the home of The Bluetones label come the talents of King Adora. 'Bionic' is catchy, if not triumphant, little number. Not likely to make much impact, execpt for several rotations on London's XFM music radio station. Indie music by numbers - 3/5
Oh my God! Finally another band has emerged awash with eyeliner, hair dye and lashings of lipstick. King Adora have emerged like demi-gods to the children of a jilted generation but at the same time like lambs to the slaughter that is music weeklies. They have already had their first slating by NME as the reviewers try to create another Placebo-esque controversy.
However here we can only sing their praises. So they are quite rude as they have named themselves after a vibrator and they also have a song called 'Super Muff Diver' hmm I could not possibly comment. Their music is quite early Placebo but not quite as good, just different. They declare to have hatred towards Placebo and the Manics but there is no denying that they are influenced greatly by a mixture of them. They have Richey's beauty and skinniness but Brian Molko's pretentiousness and a craving for sex that cannot be equaled. Ok, so they are not the sort of people you could take home to show to your mum and dad but hey that’s what makes them so much more exciting.
They have had two releases, the first being the double a-side Bionic and Law and the second being the recent single 'Big isn't Beautiful,' they are signed to Superior Quality Recordings (home of the Bluetones). Both singles equal with greatness, Big is a special song because it confronts the struggle of every person trying to be / stay skinny because (I quote) 'skinny is sexy.' The words of that song are just excellent! Taken from the Plasterzine
BBC teletext, week 8 2001. By James Fern
The Brummie lads are finally tasting success with this single. It's getting a lot of airplay on several mainstream stations. Progressive glam-punk at its finest, with emotive lyrics and a heavily stummed electric riff.
Yahoo Music Review - Bionic
Designed as a two-minute anthem for the mosh-pit hardcore; unfortunately the choruses totally, totally dominate the whole thing, to the extent where the marginalized bridges just don't get a look-in, and feel terribly weak and watery. But the shouty choruses do kick arse, maybe a little bit too crudely for a gig-centred band. The closest comparison would be early-era Placebo, but King Adora are very different, both in terms of going all-out for big sound, instead of building and planning the Molko way. But whatever you think of the music itself, which is damn decent, it's still utterly incomparable if you need anything to annoy a neighbour with.
Scene One Gig Review Brummie glam-stomping Manic Street Preacher wannabes, King Adora, once again take their glitter punk squeals on the road. As they seem to be constantly touring, it's difficult to tell when one's finished and the next has started. This time they're accompanied by pop artists, Mo*Ho*Bish*O*Pi.
Review of Bionic from Click Music Having recently graduated from the infamous Rock’n’Roll High School, King Adora have certainly mastered the art of being text-book glam punk: wild hair colours, pouting and nail varnish are in plentiful supply with this trio. Similarly, their music typifies the glam punk thang, and both aspects are very well proved by the video of this, the re-release of their very first single (video available on CD2). If you’re pining over the Manics’ move away from ‘Generation Terrorists’, you'll love this. It's virtually the same.
Review of Bionic rom Dotmusic These spiky haired pouting pretty boys may know all the right moves, but they haven't added any new ones of their own.
Vibrate You review from Southern Reporter Fast furious and short are just three words that describe Vibrate You a mix of live and previously unheard tracks from King Adora.
Now I heartily welcome the first two because we need hard-hitting rock in roll but a musical content just under 40 minutes? To be fair the CD also contains five video tracks. But how can you quibble at a band who expend more energy in 40 minutes than Pink Floyd did in a career. What's more it's not wasted effort.
Whilst Vibrate You doesn't draw breath from beginning to end, what is apparent, although not immediately, is that tracks like Friday Night Explodes would be very good songs no matter hwat pace they were played at. The band know perfectly well what they are trying to achieve, the high-charged voltage injected into Afterlife (sic) is a component not an end in itself.
What is also clear is that King Adora have remained true to the attitude that made punk such a breath of fresh air but whereas punk withered on the vine because some of them, in fact a lot of them, couldn't play, Whether and Music Takes You cement the band's reputation as musicians. Both switch effortlessly and neatly between calm and chaos, without either extreme adversely affecting the song. The latter especiallt is a supreme example of power with a heart and in the end a deal of wit.
If anyone tells you they don't make them like they used to, point them in the direction of Vibrate You and you'll see all the arrogance of youth and talent combined. With their full-on style they are sire to be a smash when they take the stage at Gig on the Green on Sunday, August 26.
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