Only by the Night

Yes it’s a far more polished commercial sound than the albums that preceded it, but that doesn’t stop it being a great album.
‘Sex on fire’ and ‘Use somebody’ are as good arena rock as it gets with infectious choruses and sawing guitars. Caleb’s vocals are the star of this album and no where is that more apparent than the brooding‘Revelry’

I am a bit indifferent to Kings of Leon. I like them fine enough, but they just don't grab me like some similar bands do. It's perfectly acceptable, but as soon as it's done I have no real eagerness to listen to it again.

I do really like the breakdown part of Be Somebody though.

A perfectly respectable:

3/5

This is fortunately/unfortunately very nostalgic for me. I’ve heard this album hundreds of times so I feel like I’m sort of conditioned to love it.

not bad

Favorite track(s): Sex on Fire, Use Somebody

I am unfortunately overcome by nostalgia for the two big hits on this album but the rest is about as bad as I expected.

Again, this almost seems like it will be an interesting listen when it first starts, but that VERY quickly changes. Status quo for the other KoL I've been unlucky enough to hear. It's cliche, disinteresting, and a lot of the times sounds like it's poking fun at how crappy indie rock is as a whole. Truly worthless music made even worse by the terrible vocals.

Why do so many grown men feel the need to sing about underage girls?

Maybe I'm being a little harsh, but I've always had a downer on this band since seeing them in the flesh and them seeming so uninterested and therefore uninteresting.

Objectively though - this is a solid album of rock tracks. 'Sex On Fire' I'm totally over, but some of the other stuff I recognised and is ok, and the tracks I didn't recognise followed the standard popularity formula.

Altogether a fine example of bog-standard pop rock .

less fun than the debut. the band sounds more polished, but the singer somehow sounds more unbearable.

there is no reason for kings of leon to have 3 albums on this list

I don't even need to listen to this one because it is one of my favourite albums of all time but I will. Closer is up there as one of my all time favourite songs but also Crawl, Sex on Fire, Use Somebody, Revelry, 17, I want you, Notion and Cold Desert. For real I think this could be one of the sexiest albums of all time

This one has the songs I first heard from them when Sex on Fire was popular, even though that song didn't really hit with me, some of the other singles like Use Somebody and Notion did more, so I'll give this a soft 4, because I did mostly enjoy it even if his singing is sort of on the edge of not liking it for me.

Enjoyed far more than I expected, bonus star for that! :)

I'd like this band if they had a different singer.

It’s really not great. But this project has really worn me down this week with some stuff I really didn’t enjoy. So this, while weak, is going to get three stars just for not making me actively angry that I have to listen to it.
In reality it is probably 2.5 at best. They could use a new vocalist. And I get that bands have signature sounds but man, these songs are all VERY similar.

Honestly kind of a weird record. Sounds like if The Strokes had the singer from Drive-By Truckers. Lyrically not great and the vocals don't always gel but the big hits work for a reason. Shocked to say I quite like it

cannot ignore the catchiness of this album. solid despite its very obvious shift in tone to make that paper

My first reaction on seeing today's album was "ugh". I don't really care for Kings of Leon, mainly because I once had a downstairs neighbour that would loudly play Sex on Fire OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER again for the entire year I lived above her.

While I didn't hate this listen anything even remotely close to that year's experience, it still didn't really do anything to endear me to Kings of Leon. It's paint-by-numbers for rock music.

Having only heard the singles, I was surprised by the quality of the rest of the songs on this album. Reading the reviews, there was someone who said the band used every trick in the book to build tension, and I wish I hadn't read that, because now I can't un-hear it. It's not going to sway my opinion, but they're right; there is some pretty formulaic songwriting happening here.

One of the things I usually take note of are bass-forward mixes because that seems to be so rare in rock. Well done here, and kudos to the bassist for being so good they want you out front

⭐⭐⭐.51

Were these guys ever influential, relevant, or important enough to even warrant 1 entry in a list of 1001 albums to hear before you die? I mean they got tons of radio play, the singles were unavoidable for a year or two after they were released, but they always just felt like a derivative, general rock band. A bit like a bluesy U2 or a watered down and poppier White Stripes. They're not a bad band, they just don't really bring anything special to the table.

it’s ok but boring