Off With Their Heads – Kaiser Chiefs

Year Released: 2008

Label: B-Unique

Year Bought: 2010

Kaiser Chiefs were one of those 00s bands that threatened to be around forever but faded away.

The first album was great, the second album had some great songs on it, but by the third album... it felt like the music world had moved on.

There seemed to be a few bands that happened to – Athlete, Maximo Park, Bloc Party, Razorlight all spring to mind as having a good couple of albums but then just stopped being relevant.

'Off With Their Heads' was trailed by the single 'Never Miss A Beat', which has some suitably Kaiser Chief-lines about eating crisps for your dinner and bunking off school, and it's probably the best song on the album.

Opening track 'Spanish Metal' sounds a bit space rock and you prepare yourself for a record that will take some interesting turns but it never really manages it.

Kaiser Chiefs are essentially a party band, and much of the record leans into their fusion of Blur, Madness and XTC. At times the keyboard-heavy sound and vocal melodies make them practically indistinguishable from Maximo Park, but without the overtly, sometimes uncomfortably, confessional lyrics.

'Good Days Bad Days' sounds like 'Five Little Speckled Frogs' crossed with 'Ob La Di Ob La Da', while 'Half The Truth' does that thing of saying seemingly random words all on the same note like one of the crimps from the Mighty Boosh:

Secret more
Getting it together
With a big fat bowl
Of alphabet spaghetti
Watch the birdie
Looking through the mirror
Polly wanna cracker
That's not what I heard

None of it has the same sense of power that 'Oh My God' or 'I Predict A Riot' delivered, or even the sheer give-a-fuckness of 'The Angry Mob'.

5/10

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