Releasing their take on The Eagles of Death Metal’s “I Love You All The Time”, Colchester’s The King Is Blind hope to raise some money for the victims of the November 2015 Paris attacks, including the family of Nick Alexander who came from the town.
Local producer Tom Donovan offered free studio sessions to bands in the community with all profits going to The Sweet Stuff Foundation to help those affected. The King Is Blind were the only extreme metal act to take up this offer, creating a cathartically haunting 6 minute epic.
The cover was recorded in 2 stages – initially with Tom in December 2015, then Musikzimmer, Vienna, under the direction of Mark Royce (Entwined) who introduced live orchestral elements.
You can the single on iTunes or stream it on Spotify. Both will benefit the charity.
Lee Appleton, guitarist for the band, had this to say:
Colchester is a small town, with a close-knit music scene. Nick Alexander was someone we knew from the pubs and gigs in our home town for many years and we felt tremendous shock and sadness when we heard about his death, along with so many others in the Paris attacks in November 2015.
Tom Donovan took the concept that EODM had presented, and took it to the extreme by offering free studio time to bands wishing to record their version of the song. Jumping head-first into the project to record as many covers of the EODM track as humanly possible, he asked if TKIB were interested in getting involved. I’ve known Tom for nearly 20 years so I know what he’s like when he’s fired up about an idea, so I said yes on behalf of the band before I’d even heard the EODM song.
As soon as I got off the phone to Tom, I looked up the original EODM track online and the fear kicked in – the song was a jaunty little ditty without a hint of Metal, let alone TKIB’s ‘Monolithic’ Metal. It became pretty clear that, instead of doing a straightforward cover of the song, we would need to tear up the original and use only the blueprint of the music to design a track, guided by our feelings surrounding Nick and Paris. With the path now clear, we began to focus on delivering a much more sombre, emotional tone to the track.
At certain points, we felt overwhelmed with emotion during the process, but with the help of Tom and our colleagues in Vienna we have been able to come up with a track expressing our comion and grief which, we hope, will be a fitting tribute to Nick and all who were directly affected by the Paris attacks.
