King (Fleshgod Apocalypse album)

King is the fourth full-length album from Italian symphonic death metal band Fleshgod Apocalypse. The album was released on February 5, 2016 through Nuclear Blast Records. The album was mixed and mastered at Fascination Street Studio in Örebro, Sweden. King is the last album to be released featuring Tommaso Riccardi on vocals and guitar before his departure in October 2017.

Concept
"The King in this album represents the brave part of ourselves: the one we should cultivate to become strong and rise again from this Dark Age. He’s the only positive figure of this story—a man who has integrity and love for the values and truth that we all should hope for ourselves. All the other characters in the court represent the fears that can lead us to make everything worse. They try to affect the King’s decisions for their own advantage and hope for a loss of power, regardless of the suffering they’re going to create for their own world and people. As we already said when we presented King to our fans, we should all hail the King who lives inside every one of us."

Production
Due to the high cost of using a live symphonic orchestra, the orchestral sounds for the album were produced using software instruments.

Personnel

 * Tommaso Riccardi – lead vocals, rhythm guitar
 * Cristiano Trionfera – lead guitar
 * Paolo Rossi – bass, clean vocals
 * Francesco Paoli – drums, backing vocals, additional guitars
 * Francesco Ferrini – piano, orchestral arrangements
 * Veronica Bordacchini – soprano vocals (Tracks 5, 7, 11)
 * Gino Ven Makes – logo
 * Jens Bogren – mixing, mastering
 * Marco Mastrobuono – engineering, co-production
 * Eliran Kantor – artwork