KINGSWOOD'S third album, Juveniles, could have sounded like Michael Jackson's Thriller or Daft Punk.
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They were just some of the crazy new avenues the Melbourne rock band were exploring as they prepared to follow up 2017's experimental After Hours, Close To Dawn, which received a mixed reception compared to their rockier 2014 debut Microscopic Wars.
However, after recording two full albums worth of material while on tour overseas, something felt amiss.
The band loved the songs, but was it Kingswood? It didn't feel like the four-piece of Fergus Linacre (vocals), Alex Laska (guitar), Braiden Michetti (bass) and Justin Debrincat (drums) that formed in 2009 due to a shared love of classic rock.
Eventually a decision was made a year ago to entirely write a new album. One that embraced the passion, energy and rock'n'roll of their youth. The result was Juveniles.
"We made records that we love and we're not gonna completely scrap them," Linacre says of the unused material. "I think we'll release them under another name and use them in some other capacity.
"We felt like this wasn't what Kingswood was and we realised what Kingswood is to us and that is the feeling of when we were young and loving rock'n'roll music and energy and passion."
The released singles off Juveniles - Say You Remember, You Make It Easy, Bittersweet and If Only - have signalled a return to the chunky riffs that were frustratingly absent on the more groove-focused After Hours, Close To Dawn.
The rest of the album continues the guitar assault. Cross My Heart sounds like The Arctic Monkeys, while Snakepit would make Josh Homme proud. The one survivor of the scrapped albums is the '70s funk-rock epic, Marilyn, written about a woman who dresses like '50s icon Marilyn Monroe.
"Part of the reason the last album was less like that was because Al [Laska] broke his hand and couldn't play guitar in a lot of the writing and recording," Linacre says.
"We loved the aspect of where the album went, it was very experimental and certainly a different direction for us, but this time around we decided to really get back into guitar music and focus on music that really makes people move and gets us energised on stage."
Another major hurdle during the production of the album had nothing to do with musical direction.
Last year Kingswood's Melbourne's studio was broken into and guitars, keyboards and hard drives with recordings for the album were stolen.
"It had metal bars up and everything, so it was Fort Knox, but they still got in," Linarce says.
The decision was quickly made to return to Nashville, where they had recorded their previous two albums.
"The robbery might have jolted us into action and got us away from Melbourne and made us go to Nashville where we're really happy making music and we spent a month there," he says.
"We don't struggle to write it's just the messages and songs we want to present on a Kingswood album that takes time and focus."
Juveniles is released on Friday. Kingswood play at Kambri ANU, Canberra (March 18); Unibar, Wollongong (March 19) and the Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle (March 21).
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