Kingdoms of Magical Rock

『Kingdoms of Magical Rock』は、2024年6月7日に出た全22曲70分のカヴァー集である。前年の『The Most Magical Album on Earth』がディズニーだけを扱ったのに対し、本作は枠を広げた。『グレイテスト・ショーマン』の“The Greatest Show”と“This Is Me”、ドリームワークスの『プリンス・オブ・エジプト』から“Deliver Us”と“The Plagues”、そして“Kung Fu Fighting”までが同じ棚に並ぶ。客演はひとりだけ、“Into the Unknown”のメタル版に加わったトリヴィアムのマシュー・K・ヒーフィーである。 ここでも曲数の読み方に注意がいる。22曲のうち“Into the Unknown”は2度現れ、4曲目にヒーフィーとのメタル版、22曲目に通常版が置かれる。実質は21曲と1つの作り直しで、『Skalds of Metal』とまったく同じ構造だ。この人は同じ曲の別版を同じ盤に収めることを繰り返しており、曲数をそのまま楽曲数と読むと必ず狂う。“Hellfire”に始まり“Heigh-Ho”“Surface Pressure”“Poor Unfortunate Souls”“Gaston”と続く並びは、原曲の陽性を彼の濁った低音が一律に塗り替えていく作業でもある。

Kingdoms of Magical Rock, released on 7 June 2024, is a twenty-two song, seventy-minute covers set. Where the previous year's The Most Magical Album on Earth stayed inside Disney, this one widens the frame: "The Greatest Show" and "This Is Me" from The Greatest Showman, "Deliver Us" and "The Plagues" from DreamWorks' The Prince of Egypt, and "Kung Fu Fighting" all sit on the same shelf. There is one guest, Matthew K. Heafy of Trivium, on the metal version of "Into the Unknown." The track count needs reading carefully again. "Into the Unknown" appears twice among the twenty-two — the Heafy metal version at four, the ordinary one at twenty-two. What is really here is twenty-one songs and one reworking, exactly the structure of Skalds of Metal. This is a habit: he puts alternate takes of a song on the same record, and reading the track count as a song count will be wrong every time. The run from "Hellfire" through "Heigh-Ho," "Surface Pressure," "Poor Unfortunate Souls" and "Gaston" is also the sound of his clouded low register painting over the brightness of the originals, one after another.