KINGDOM COME – Kingdom Come (1988)

When KINGDOM COME came out in 1988, with their self-styled debut, and the single “Get It On”, the band drew an instant comparison to Led Zeppelin, and to some, not in a good way. The single was heard as a rip-off of “Kashmir”, and the band’s sound, particularly singer Lenny Wolf, were criticised for being blatantly using Zeppelin and Robert Plant’s (vocal) style. At that point I barely knew much of Zeppelin, and to me Kingdom Come was just another good new band to come out in the 80s. And to be fair, KC weren’t the first band to try and sound like Zeppelin. Instead of embracing the Zeppelin influence though, in interviews the band members played it down, which upset critics, and still does. Again, I didn’t care, I liked the album, the sound, Wolf’s vocals…

Kingdom Come was an album I picked up on cassette early on, and played regularly. I’d later get the LP and a 12 inch single. The lead off track “Living Out Of Touch” is probably my favorite here, great riff to start off. “Pushin’ Hard” keeps up the rock pave, a bit heavier, followed by the ballad “What Love Can Be”, a good song (and single), with Wolf delivering a fairly Robert Plant influenced vocal. The first side also features two more heavier tracks, the bluesier “17” (not comment on the lyrics), and rockier “The Shuffle”. Love the overall sound of this album; the guitars sound clean and heavy, and James Kottak’s drums really drive this whole thing.

The second side opens with the band’s best known song (and single) “Get It On”, but I prefer the next few tracks “Now, Forever After”, the slow but heavy, sort of ballad “Hideway”. The band also offered up an acoustic ballad in “Loving You” (this is more reminiscent of Zeppelin than most anything else here, to me). The album ends with a pretty cool anthem in “Shout It Out”. Not a dodgy track here.

This album got a worldwide release on Polydor, and went Gold upon release in the US, and would go Platinum there, as well as Canada and Germany. So for all the critisism they may have gotten, they did pretty damn good with this debut. Kingdom Come followed this up a year later with their 2nd album In Your Face, which I thought was just as good, but it did not have the impact the first one had. They split up following In Your Face, with Lenny Wolf carrying on the band name for years to come releasing a dozen more albums with different players, before he retired in 2016.