Rhode Island’s Kingsmen are making crushing music to get us through the dark times

Kingsmen’s Tanner Guimond is in sombre mood as he tells Hammer of the turbulent events that shaped the Rhode Island bruisers’ crushing debut, Revenge.Forgiveness.Recovery. Death and sickness nearly derailed the band completely; Tanner lost two friends, one to suicide and one to murder, as well as his grandmother, while guitarist Tim’s daughter went through three bouts of leukaemia.

“In the middle of every trial and tribulation we faced where we thought we were just going to end this or keep going, we kept coming back because we all had each other’s back and this music really brought us together,” says Tanner. “It helped us get some clarity and positivity in our lives when we needed it most.”

A cross-pollination of bruising death metal and hardcore, their debut album comes in a time of global uncertainty. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic confined millions of people into quarantine and has killed hundreds of thousands. It’s an anxious and worrying time. For Tanner, he hopes that Kingsmen can instil a collectivity of hope for when this storm passes.

“Once we started seeing all the cities, like the big cities shutting down, especially in our county in America, we were like, ‘We need to push full-steam ahead and get this out there.’ Chances are, this year 2020 is going to be a very strange year, it’s probably going to be a dark year. I think it’s already a dark year, as far as I’m concerned. And I think people might need a record like this.”