| King of the Sun | |
| Type: | Album |
| Artist: | The Saints |
| Cover: | Thesaintskingofthesuncover.jpg |
| Released: | 2012 |
| Recorded: | Trackdown Studios. Sydney, Australia. |
| Label: | Highway 125 (Australia) Fire (UK; released with King of the Midnight Sun) |
| Producer: | Fortunato Luchresi |
| Prev Title: | Imperious Delirium |
| Prev Year: | 2006 |
King of the Sun is the fourteenth and final studio album released by Australian rock music group The Saints. Recorded in Sydney, Australia, the album is a concept album based on a journey home after a hundred-year war.[1]
The album was met with mostly positive reviews from the Australian music press. Patrick Emery from Beat Magazine noted: "With only minor exception, it’s Bailey in his finest whimsical folk-blues guise. The title track has a whiff of literary pretension, its lyrics a set of seemingly non-sequitur statements built around a simple melody and Bailey’s disaffected vocals. Sweet Chariot is arguably the classic contemporary Saints style – a lumbering blues-based pop lick and an aesthetic that sits perfectly with Bailey’s modern day Lord Byron persona. Million Miles Away (La De Bloody Da) would, if attended to in a brutal punk manner, be one of the great garage rock tracks; here, it’s an intriguing acoustic track of surprising depth. "[2]
Also included in the 2012 CD release was a bonus disc called Songs from the Stash. These featured nine songs from the post Ed Kuepper period.
In 2014, the album was issued in some territories as a double; the second disc is the same track listing, but all songs have been re-recorded with guitarist Barrington Francis and drummer Peter Wilkinson, who did not appear on the original record.