21. February 2025
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Media Review

Hot Country Knights – The K Is Silent

Florian Buechtingby Florian Buechting

Hot Country Knights - The K is Silent

Hot Country Knights - The K is Silent
4.7

Rating

 4.7/5

Flyctory.com Pros

  • Hilarious satiric songs, 1990's style
  • Great production, the songs and jokes don't feel cheap
  • Wide range of songs

If you already know five out of ten tracks of an album and just feel to deeply miss the other five ones, then the act just must be very special. I love country music, I love the music of Dierks Bentley and I admire parodies and satiric songs from artists like Weird Al Yankovic – thus, the Hot Country Knights are just a strike in the bowling alley of my musical taste. Their debut The K Is Silent has been released on 1st May 2020 – and I just had to take a night shift review for this one.

Hot Country Knights – About The Artists

Even though the Hot Country Knights became quite present to the country music scene, they have already formed by Dierks Bentley in 2015. The band contains of Bentley and his road band – however, they act with different identites. For example, Bentley is called Douglas Doug Douglason. The Hot Country Knights invested quite much time and detail and scripted fictional background stories about all characters. They do country music in the style of the 1990’s – however, the songs are typically humorous and satirical. The first singles to promote towards The K Is Silent have been released in early 2020, with Pick Her Up featuring Travis Tritt being the first one. The song made it to the 40’s of the US country charts.

 

Hot Country Knights – The K is Silent – Track by Track

The K is Silent features ten tracks.The total playtime is 36 minutes.

1. Hot Country Knights

The first song of the album starts with the band spelling Hot Country Knights – and that’s also the name of the first song. Wow – this concept just seems to work even in this quite classic, but very rocking environment. Makes you want to dance.

2. Pick Her Up (feat. Travis Tritt)

The first 2020 release the Hot Country Knights had was this speedy country dancefloor song. Nice collaboration with Travis Tritt, by the way, whose voice perfectly fits to this track.

Pick her up in a pickup truck
And take her out to a honky tonk
Turn an ice cold longneck up
Dance around to an old jukebox
If you really wanna rock the world
Of a pretty little country girl
Just know when you pick her up
Pick her up in a pickup truck

3. Asphalt

It ain’t my fault
It’s that asphalt
Yeah, it calls out my name and I’m gone just like that
I don’t really care if it’s curvy or flat
I could stay, but there’s always a “but”
That makes me jump into my truck
There’s one big ol’ reason why I’m even leavin’ at all
It’s that asphalt
That sweet asphalt

No special comment on that chorus. Unfortunately, you cannot see my smile while I am writing these lines. The song – another pre-released one – is a slow track with a lot of atmosphere… And some made-to-smile lyrics, of course 🙂

4. Moose Knuckle Shuffle

The Moose Knuckle Shuffle (I better not translate it for those of you who do not speak English as their native one…) has been my favorite track released before the album. A straight party track – which even comes with an own style of dancing.

5. Then It Rained

This rather slow and dark song is does just feel like a party-breaker, but of course, the chorus is just too catching. It stopped for a little while, then it rained – not too friendly weather, a not too friendly atmosphere in the song – but just another excellent production.

6. Wrangler Danger

The Wrangler Danger is going back to straight country rock songs. These productions remind me a lot of Weird Al: if you don’t listen to the lyrics too much (especially as a non-native speaker), you just enjoy an excellent music production in the 1990’s style – but if you listen to the lyrics and enjoy all the funny elements, you feel ashamed that you did not listen properly before.

7. Mull It Over

Mull It Over is another track which has a touch of being sleazy – but overall, the song (and the whole album) is just too perfectly produced to be really bad. One of my favorites of the “new” (previously unreleased) songs.

8. Kings of Neon

A straight melody, good rhythm – the repetitive Kings of Neon (with a sigh at the end of the chorus….) might not be my favorite, but it is definitely another really nice piece of songwriting and parody. Well done!

9. You Make It Hard (feat. Terri Clark)

This excessively mushy country ballad was the last song the Knights released before the album. Superb song – maybe some sort of final statement before the release that you just have to buy, pre-order, pre-save The K is Silent to enjoy it on that 1st May 2020.

10. The USA Begins with Us

This song, which is recorded in the style of a live recording.is a satirical view on the typical home-proud US country songs – the crowds in the background even cheer “USA, USA” at the beginning of the track. Another cool tune, another great idea, a very different style of song – and all that at a high musical quaility!

Hot Country Knights – The K is Silent – Spotify

Here is the Spotify widget to pre-listen to the album:

 

Hot Country Knights – The K is Silent – My View

Waiting for The K Is Silent was like waiting for a video game, you just deeply long to finally own in my youth years: you see the first screenshots (here: Pick Her Up), maybe have a review (or nowadays: a playable demo) – the Moose Knuckle Shuffle is something like that. And then you hold the disc or cardridge (for 2020’s: you stream the album on Amazon, Spotify, whatever….). And when you finally played the game… Either it was love or you knew you had some wasted investment.

The K is Silent is maybe not Final Match Tennis (my all-time favorite video game), but it is definitely something like The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past: you enjoy your first steps and quickly just cannot stop being fascinated. You need to be precise to produce a humorous-satiric album like that – you simply either create a lax or a too cheap-feeling album. The Hot Country Knights are too professional to do that. With this album you get ten very well-produced songs and a lot of fun. What else do you want? Top Pick – of course!

 

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