BY SARAI KELLEY MOSS
Fit For a King kicked off their headlining tour “The Hell We Create” in Tempe, Arizona at the Marquee Theater with support from Alpha Wolf and Northlane.
American metalcore band Fit For A King hails from Tyler, Texas and consists of guitarists Bobby Lynge and Daniel Gailey, vocalist Ryan Kirby, bassist Ryan “Tuck” O’Leary, and drummer Trey Celaya. After forming in 2007, the band quickly caught fire in the 2010s via the chart-topping studio LPs Creation/Destruction (2013) debuted at Number 6 on the Hard Rock chart. Slave to Nothing (2014) cracked the Top 50 of Billboard’s Top Current Albums. Deathgrip (2016) climbed to Number 5 among Hard Rock Albums.
Taking off on their music journey, FFAK performed locally and regionally and released two EPs in their beginning years, Fit for a King in 2008 and Awaken the Vesper in 2009 and one independent album, Descendants, in 2011. On the strength of self-releases, the group joined Solid State Records in July of 2012 where they have released 6 studio albums: Creation/Destruction, Slave to Nothing, Deathgrip, Dark Skies, The Path, and their most recent release in October of 2022 The Hell We Create.
The Texas band followed in suit of well-known early 2000’s hardcore artists like As I Lay Dying, Impending Doom, and Underoath, producing their own signature style of hardcore and metalcore colored in with hypnotic hooks. They have skillfully mined the varying extremes of this scene, building a catalog that sees them at home on tours with fellow metalcore and deathcore bands alike. The band is well known for using their trademark hardcore sound to unapologetically explore the dark side of the human experience, ultimately wrenching timeless hope from the jaws of anxiety, depression, and seemingly certain despair. Known initially for their ability to push the limits of heaviness within metalcore with earth shattering breakdowns and nasty unclean vocals, their sound has taken more of a melodic shift that began with 2018’s Dark Skies. They’ve often flipped the sing/scream script by featuring clean verses and furious choruses, instead of the more common opposite structure. Heavy breakdowns or melodic screams, one in all the music and message vis still the same as is that Fit For A King is a battle cry against the darkness. Consistently expressing vulnerability, truth, struggle, and hurts, genuine artists that paint a portrait of the monumental pressures of modern life.
Tempe, Arizona was the first stop on the “The Hell We Create” tour in support of their 7th album release. The album follows a string of four records that have landed in the Top 5 on both the Billboard Top Christian Albums Chart and the Top Hard Rock Albums Chart; it was born from traumatic experiences and has become the most personal product Fit For A King have ever created. The Hell We Create explores intergenerational trauma in vocalist Ryan Kirby’s life, the album entirety is an emotional journey rife with fear, escape and the paralytic terror of the unknown.
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