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Critic Reviews
90
King Night stands alone, both from its apparent contemporaries as well as from the band itself; it's not so much their creation as their demon offspring, the kind of solid and complete creation that lesser (or just unluckier) bands spend entire careers striving towards.
12y
90
You can call this drag or witch house if you like but regardless of its genre tag this is monumental.
12y
90
There’s nothing around that’s really like King Night, an album that reaches incredibly beautiful heights ... and explores distorted, deserted depths.
11y
81
Salem evokes the seismic thrill of a good Gucci drop alongside all of Nico’s ghostly beauty within the very framework and timbre of their productions. The result is no less than one of 2010’s most exciting debuts.
11y
80
Salem deal in fragments and ambiguities; their music is unmistakably dark, in all the senses above and more, and saps power from the tension they set up between reality and dream. But there’s light and beauty there too.
15y
80
Whether or not you think antipathy and self-destruction are legitimate themes for music, or you feel that even the pretty remote handling of rap that Salem has done as three white kids is too much, you can’t dismiss what started all this hub-bub in the first place: the fact that the trio has crafted a sound that still doesn’t really sound like anything else.
6y
80
They might be unreliable performers, but their studio work is forward-thinking and beautiful in an oddly satisfying, downtrodden way.
10y
80
It’s a terrifying and astounding album – don’t listen to it alone.
11y
80
Salem don't take themselves seriously; they're just messing around. Except that King Night is too sonically compelling to be easily dismissed as the next disposable flavor of the month.
10y
80
Throughout all of King Night, the feeling of a séance being held or a spell being cast is palpable, but Salem's ability to be affecting and menacing at the same time is pure alchemy.
12y
79
It is not flawless, and several of the best tracks (“Frost, “Redlights”) here are simply cleaned up standouts from their earlier EP’s, but overall it is an extremely solid effort from a new and polarizing band.
12y
75
The witch house poster band's brand of slowed-down, blown-out, culturally mishmashed electronic music has proven divisive, but it was always meant to be.
15y
70
Listening to King Night is like a watching a war-zone report in full, Technicolor widescreen: it’s not somewhere you’d want to be for too long, but in short doses it’s brutal, thrilling and scary as hell.
11y
60
A stocking stuffer for that kid in the trench coat.
11y
60
Rave horns echo like WW2 sirens being played on a fucked-up ghetto blaster while the cast of House Of 1000 Corpses do their best Gucci Mane impressions – an interesting, if perhaps slightly contrived, oddity.
11y
50
There is no journey to be found in the album, and the music is ultimately a monotonous collection of crack-pipe nightmares, a gimmick fit for play around Halloween time.
15y
50
An aggressively regressive stew of cheap horror-movie atmospherics, booger-flinging beats, rudimentary rapping, and occasional (perhaps accidental) moments of genuine profundity, Salem’s King Night is an Insane Clown Posse record that thinks it’s too clever to be an Insane Clown Posse record.
15y
40
Trash, art, or stunt? In the few effective moments, it’s all three.
15y
40
The whole thing amounts to far more style than substance, and one can hear the brittle potential of the band’s earlier singles slowly crumble over the course of the record.
15y
Being one of the earlier acts within the Witch House scene, it's obvious that they were essentially building from the ground up, taking inspiration from House music and fusing it with this Trap sound that even at the time hadn't been explored too much, with only a few notable names heading the genre. For how essential this album is in the genres history, with plenty of tropes that are now found in many of the biggest names in the genres music, you can tell that there wasn't much ... read more
production here is absolutely fucking insane, and the flows are fuckin badass this is a Witch House classic.
Best songs: King Night, Frost, Sick, Release da Boar, Trapdoor, Redlights, Hound, Traxx, Tair, Killer
Worst songs: Asia
light 9/10
The witch house phenomenon that occurred in the early 2010's was definitely an odd flash in the pan for electronic music. For as short of a time in the limelight as it had, its influence was far-reaching, eventually leading to long-lasting effects everywhere; from pop music to hip hop, one can still note a palpable witch house influence in the works of contemporary rap collectives such as the critically-lauded Drain Gang and...the less critically-lauded GothBoiClique. That being said, though, ... read more
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Track List
Year End Lists
| #2 | / | The Quietus |
| #6 | / | FACT Magazine |
| #8 | / | NME |
| #16 | / | The Line of Best Fit |
| #18 | / | Gigwise |
| #23 | / | Complex |
| #23 | / | Stereogum |
| #26 | / | DIY |
| #43 | / | Cokemachineglow |
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7mo
I've never seen an album where the difference between how good it is and how high people rate it is this big. This might be one of the worst releases of 2010 but the reviews make it seem like it's good to trick people into listening. That's just cruel
