Texan Heavyweights Fit For A King On New Album ‘Lonely God’

‘Our politics is like a TV show and it’s always been that way. It’s just getting worse. It’s literally becoming ‘Idiocracy’. The fact that we have a UFC fight happening on the White House lawn is absurd, but that’s a whole other subject matter.’

Ryan Kirby, vocalist of Texan heavyweights Fit For A King describes the backdrop to the bands storming new album Lonely God, out on August 1. Lonely God itself is a much darker and heavier beast than predecessor The Hell We Create.

‘A large reason it turned out that way is because we were in the studio during the American Presidential election. Everything was just constant, like social media, everything, the tv, it was always gloom and doom and awful. I mean even the world, even though you aren’t living in America, everybody sees all the BS happening in America and it’s just a train wreck at all times.’

In the three years since Ryan and I last spoke, the despair of Kirby’s personal life has been replaced by unconditional love, thus allowing an ability to release a creative grip on the lyrical content.

‘I think I did just as much work lyrically this time, we wrote fifteen songs versus ten, three of them are just not released yet. They’ll come out later and they’re not like the duds of the record. One of them was going to be a single, but we decided we wanted it to have its own moment later on in the cycle. I almost needed people to come in and be like, ‘Hey guys, I need some help’. It let me stay fresh with the lyrics. If I had to do all fifteen with no input, well my brain already felt like mush at the end of the demo session. There’s only so many words you can use, but everybody was way more involved. I basically said, ‘Hey, the door’s open. If you write a cool vocal part, it can go on the song’. If I think it’s cool, I’m not going to push back or be prideful. It doesn’t have to be all me. If you have something meaningful you want to say, then I also want it to be in the lyrics. But I also got more involved with the instrumental and production side of things and I think it was cool because everyone in the band didn’t just do one thing. Everybody was very involved in every aspect of the record.’

Another reason for the sonically darker sound is a change in producer, with Daniel Braunstein who worked with Spiritbox amongst others, cajoling the band further.

‘We love Drew still. I talk to him on a regular basis and we’re going to write with him again in the future. But Braunstein, he’s different because Drew is a number one hit machine. He has twenty number ones on rock radio and has done Disturbed, Motionless In White and Ice Nine Kills, but Braunstein is successful in his own right. He done the Spiritbox record and Dayseeker, the big difference is Spiritbox isn’t a number one rock song type band. They’re just an amazing band that writes amazing music, Braunstein never has really concerned himself with the number one. It’s just different, it’s not wrong, Dan is more, ’how can I get the best version of what you guys want?’

‘Even so, there are songs that I don’t think Drew would’ve necessarily encouraged on the new record that Bronstein was all in on because the ceiling of the song is a little lower. Songs like ‘Witness The End’ would’ve been a little more ‘are we sure we want to go that metal when we were in Drew’s studio?’ But Braunstein is ‘this is sick.’ Like I said, they’re both just different mindsets.’

A continuation of that theme is the concept already flourishing. Videos have been released for a number of tracks such as No Tomorrow, Begin The Sacrifice and Lonely God with another just filmed at time of interview which we can’t yet name, that will complete an arc of a story. Does this make them an album band then?

‘I’ve always, and I still do, love albums. I love fleshing out ideas and having the full identity of the band painted over a ten to fifteen song album. I have such a good appreciation for albums that flow and just feel like they’re building a world and singles have such a hard time building a world versus an album, but singles can make your whole career by having one great single. So not that one is right or one is wrong, but I think I prefer the album approach.’

‘The whole album itself isn’t a cohesive concept record, but there are five songs that feed into a story. I view it as like ‘Begin The Sacrifice’, ‘Lonely God’ and the last song, which I can’t officially say but I already did! They’re like the main story. Then songs such as ‘No Tomorrow’, ‘The Temple’, ‘Extinction’ and ‘Technium’ all take place in the universe of those three worlds and have loose ties to those songs. So it’s kind of like the Lord of the Rings approach where there’s the main stories and then there’s the side quests for people that want to dive deeper.’

One track that Australian audiences will adore will be Monolith, which in my humble opinion, if written by an Aussie metalcore band, would win all the heavy and alternative awards this year which bring us to the next years tour with The Plot In You.

‘Just playing gigantic Australian shows is such a big bucket list thing. I mean we played really big shows with Alpha Wolf, like shows that have a thousand people, but The Plot In You shows are like, I didn’t realize how gigantic they are out in Australia! They’ve already sold out like two thousand five hundred caps and they’re looking at upgrading the venues to even bigger sizes. So, it’ll be our first experience playing truly very large shows out in Australia. That opens the door to us coming back on headliners and stuff like that. I’m excited to go to the beaches. I know I have friends saying ‘I know some beaches that are a little more hidden and not where all the tourists are.’ So I’m excited. You got to go to the Koala Sanctuary like every other band, go lay down with the kangaroos still.’

Interview By Iain McCallum

LONELY GOD – OUT AUGUST 1, Pre-Order/ Pre-Save HERE…

On tour with The Plot In You in 2026, tickets from Destroy All Lines…