FIT FOR A KING use the tools of heavy music and melodic hooks to honestly explore the dark side of the human experience, ultimately wrenching timeless hope from the jaws of anxiety, depression, and seemingly certain despair.

No matter the pristine picture of self-worth we project, in the unquenchable pursuit of recognition and affirmation, the gnawing anxiousness of guilt and brokenness chews away at our spirits, uncovering new pain and vulnerability.

Dark Skies is FIT FOR A KING’s evocative declaration of a hard won victory. “This album is far from happy. It’s about personal struggles,” explains singer Ryan Kirby. “It touches on many subjects relevant to all of our daily lives.”

The music and message of FIT FOR A KING is a battle cry against the darkness. This is a sound that stands in defiance of the mounting pressure of modern life, not through dismissiveness or easy answers, but with earnest struggle. The four young men of FIT FOR A KING are just like the rest of us. They hurt, they bleed, and in that raw transparent authenticity, they offer true solidarity. Beneath the most vicious downpour, they cling to unrelenting grace.

Like trailblazing metalcore giants Underoath and As I Lay Dying before them, FIT FOR A KING skillfully mine the varying extremes of this music, building a catalog that sees them at home on tours with hard rock and deathcore bands

alike. The band has traveled the United States and Europe with Vans Warped Tour, Beartooth, Every Time I Die, August Burns Red, The Amity Affliction, Whitechapel, For Today, After The Burial, and Attila to name a few.

Kirby, guitarist Bobby Lynge, drummer Jared Easterling, and bassist/vocalist Ryan “Tuck” O’Leary are easygoing and affable on the road, effortlessly maneuvering within the various social circles with goodwill and charm, without sacrificing an ounce of what they believe or who they are. It’s something the Texas band’s growing following respects. Simply put, FIT FOR A KING is real.

FIT FOR A KING was built with bootstrap ethics and do-it-yourself vigor. On the strength of self-released material, the group joined Solid State for a string of successful albums that connected with the downtrodden and dispossessed. Creation/Destruction (2013) debuted at Number 6 on the Hard Rock chart. Slave to Nothing (2014) cracked the Top 50 of Billboard’s Top Current Albums. Deathgrip (2016) climbed to Number 5 among Hard Rock Albums.

Recorded with celebrated producer/mixer Drew Fulk (I Prevail, Motionless In White, Memphis May Fire), Dark Skies is a collection of diverse anthems powered by the undeniable weight of truth-telling emotional vulnerability.

“Tower of Pain” takes unbridled heaviness to breathtaking heights. “Shattered Glass” is a killer throwback to the band’s most aggressive earlier work. Songs like “Price of Agony” see the quartet soaring to new melodic heights with unrestrained urgency. “Anthem of the Defeated” veers in yet another direction, evoking the percussive power of Slipknot or Mudvayne. Yet all of it is anchored in FIT FOR A KING’s signature sound, one their fans trust. “Debts of the Soul” is an examination of the sleeplessness that comes with ruminations on the nature of death. “When Everything Means Nothing” is a

challenge to unplug from the vapid desperation of putting on a front online. “Oblivion” is one of the most faith-based songs the band has released. The song’s narrator pleads in the chorus, “Tell me I won’t be forgotten.” It’s a reminder of the grace of God and the power of true forgiveness without end.

No matter the political divisions, the staggering alienation arising from our paradoxical and increasingly “connected” world, or the mistakes we all make, FIT FOR A KING offer a foundation of open-mindedness and compassion.

“We're a very transparent band. We aren’t pretending to be something we're not,” says Kirby. “We don't want to act like rock stars and we also don't want to act like we're poor musicians that can barely eat everyday. We don’t portray a false image. We want people to know exactly who we are.”

FIT FOR A KING cherishes unwavering honesty. Even under Dark Skies.

In Humor and Sadness, the debut album from ’68, demonstrates the loud beauty of alarming simplicity. A guy bashing his drums, another dude wielding a guitar like a percussive, blunt weapon while howling into a mic somehow manages to sound bigger and brasher than the computerized bombast of every six-piece metal band. A splash of roots, a soulful yearning for mid century Americana and the fiery passion of post punk ferocity rampages over a record of earnestly forceful tracks like a runaway locomotive.

Josh Scogin wasn’t out of elementary school when the Flat Duo Jets laid their first album down on two tracks in a garage. But the scrappy band’s spirit of raw power, punchy delivery, tried-and-true rhythms and urgent sense of immediacy is alive and well in ’68.

Heralded by Alternative Press as one of 2014’s Most Anticipated Albums, In Humor and Sadness is a snapshot of a fiery new beginning for one of modern Metalcore’s most celebrated frontmen. Produced by longtime Scogin collaborator Matt Goldman (Underoath, Anberlin, The Devil Wears Prada), the first full offering from ’68 is a broad reaching slab of ambitious showmanship delivered with few tools and fewer pretensions. The scratchy disharmonic pop of Nirvana’s Bleach is in there, for sure. And while many associate the setup with The Black Keys, ’68 is more like Black Keys on crack.

“I wanted it to be as loud and obnoxious as it can be,” Scogin explains. “I want it to be in-your-face. I want people who hear us live to just be like, ‘There's no way this is just two dudes!’ That became sort of the subplot to our entire existence. ‘How much noise can two guys make?’ It’s obviously very minimalistic, but in other ways, it’s very big. I have as many amps onstage as a five piece band. Michael only has one cymbal and one tom on his kit, but he plays it like it’s some kind of big ‘80s metal drum setup. It’s minimalistic, but it’s also overkill. We get as much as we can from as little as we can.”

Like many pioneers, North Carolina’s the Flat Duo Jet’s blazed a trail for more commercially successful people. They played rootsy rockabilly but with a punk edge. Band leader Dexter Romweber’s solo work was a fist-pounding celebration of audacity and disruption, which influenced the likes of The White Stripes, among other bands.

“I got excited when I thought about the distress, the chaos that this two-piece arrangement would create – one guy having to provide all of these sounds, with a bunch of pedals, with certain chords wigging out and missing notes here and there,” he says with excitement. “That alone makes up for the chaos of having five people up there.”

That idea of less is more, of building something big from something small, persists today at the top of the charts with The Black Keys, just as it’s lived and breathed in the bass-player-less eclectic trio Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the rule-breaking early ‘90s destruction of Washington D.C.’s Nation of Ulysses, and in the two man attack of ’68.

“Jon Spencer’s records always sound like he’s kind of winging it and I love that,” declares Scogin, letting out an affectionate laugh. “In my last band, that’s how we tried to make our last record feel. The excitement and imperfection is something I love to draw from.”

Before paring (and pairing) things down with friend and drummer Michael McClellan, Josh Scogin was the voice, founder and agitprop-style provocateur in The Chariot, who laid waste to convention across a brilliantly unhinged and defiantly unpolished catalog of Noisecore triumphs and dissonant art rock rage. Recorded live in the studio, overdub free, The Chariot’s first album set the tone for a decade to come, owing more to a band like Unsane than whatever passes for “scene.”

Scogin was the original singer for Norma Jean and left an influential imprint on the burgeoning Metalcore of the late 90s that persists today, despite having fronted the band for just one of six albums. Whether it’s the genre-defining heft of Norma Jean’s first album or the five records and stage destroying shows of The Chariot, there’s a single constant at the heart of Josh Scogin’s career: a familiarity with the unfamiliar.

A new Metalcore band would be a safe third act for the subculture lifer, but Scogin isn’t comfortable unless he’s making himself (and his audience) uncomfortable. “I definitely wanted to flip the script a bit,” he freely confesses. “I’ve always wanted to play guitar and sing in a band, ever since I left Norma Jean. I needed the freedom of not having a guitar onstage, but now having done that for several years, I wanted the challenge.”

Creative problem solving has long been the name of the game for Scogin, whether he was hand stamping ALL 30,000 CDs for The Chariot’s Wars and Rumors of Wars album or figuring out how to pull off his ’68 song title concept in the digital age of iTunes. Each song on In Humor and Sadness was to be titled with simply a single letter, which when put together vertically on the back of a vinyl LP or compact disc, would spell out a word. However, it's problematic to name more than one song with the same letter, which would have been necessary to spell out what he intended.

’68 is the forward thinking progress of an artist who finds satisfaction in the expression of dissatisfaction. There’s progression in this regression. Tear apart all of the elements that have enveloped a singer’s performance, strap a guitar on the guy and set him loose with nothing but a beat behind him? It’s a recipe for inventive, fanciful mayhem.

After a raucous debut at South By Southwest, a full US tour supporting Chiodos and many more road gigs on the horizon, Scogin and McClellan are propelled by the excitement that comes along with the knowledge that ‘68 is truly just getting started.

“We’ve just broken the tip of the iceberg. We’re really just exploring all the different things we can do,” Scogin promises. “I’ll get more pedals, we’re try different auxiliary instruments, whatever – the goal is to challenge ourselves and challenge an audience.”