REVIEW: Kid, Feral - 2019

Coming from Skövde, Sweden is screamo act KID, FERAL. Making a return to recorded music that’s awfully long-awaited - their first album was released in 2018 - follow-up 2019 was recorded all across the period since LP1 and now.

The eight tracks across 2019 are shaped by hardships, failed relationships, serious injuries, and personal ruin. Written largely during the band’s youth but released at what they’ve called the ‘dawn of their middle age’, the album reflects years of persistence, frustration, and creative obsession. The drums were recorded all the way back in October 2019, while the rest of the album was written, rewritten, recorded, and reworked over the years, revising the guitar and bass parts again and again until they reached the form we hear them in today.

The fifteen or so minutes of time the release spans rush by in a blur upon listening, as the heartwrenching sounds of opener Funeral In A Grocery Store morph into the more tender intro found on penultimate track I Want To Be Your Canopy before breaking into raucous, anguished chaos. Substance and Medieval Poetry go back to back with emotive shrieks and stabs of noise through the wall of sound, and Puddle Jumper closes off the LP with more desperately sorrowful yelling.

The most important thing to keep in mind here is that this release should, nine times out of ten, be listened to in full. It’s very short and flows incredibly well so won’t feel like much time has passed at all, but dividing up the vast well of emotion present into smaller segments will only serve to diminish the beauty and spectacle of 2019’s fifteen minutes. In a weird way, the album is quite endearing, feeling like an old friend after just a couple listens, and is certainly one worth visiting over and over again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPyNs5tD3g0

Summing up 2019 could either be done in just a few short words, or with pages and pages of work, but to try and cut that down the middle here are our thoughts. It will leave you with a mushy pang of searingly aching nostalgia for a time gone by that you don’t quite remember, all drenched in a slightly cold but deep yellow sunlight. Every moment manages to worm inside of you, and each extra listen will push this closer to your heart and open you up that little bit more until you’re barely holding yourself together. That is the point of this album. It’s brilliant, it’s devastatingly sad, and it’s angry and pissed off and needs you to listen to it.

Score: 8/10

2019 will be released on 29th May 2026 via Backpack Records.

Words: Jasmine Longhurst

Photos: Kid, Feral