King Cat Rhythm, the wild neo-rockin psychobillies from the mean streets of Budapest via sunny Spain, might just have quietly dropped the  album of the year on Youtube, track by track. This subtle drop is a huge contrast to their big energy shows, but ‘Black Rings’ has been a long time in the making. “I worked on it for…too many years. The songs were really written like five years ago [and] recorded four years ago but just came out now,” explains vocalist and guitarist Bognár Balázs. “I don’t really feel… It doesn’t really feel real, but at least it’s out. I thought it’s never gonna happen. I’m really happy about it. And the reviews about the songs are really, really positive and good, so I’m actually really happy about it that it’s came out finally.” 

He’s pleasantly surprised to hear that Rip It Up’s favourite track on ‘Black Rings’ is ‘Devil is Alive’. “Really? I’m really happy that everybody has their own favourite which is what I wanted to achieve, because every of [the songs] is a little bit different. So, this is new that ‘Devil Is Alive’,  for the first time, is a favourite one. I wanted a fast song to appear on the album. Definitely we had to have a song that the people were wrecking to.” He pauses and laughs, demonstrating some wrecking moves.”That’s my fast song on the album. This is the one that doesn’t even have a meaning or a story behind it. I just made the words as how I felt at the moment when I was writing. First, it was called ‘The Mexican Song’ because I didn’t even have the title and it’s just sung [in a Mexican way]. And yeah, it’s just after ‘Black Rings’: it’s on purpose because it has also this subject of the Devil and a little bit of this dark things [in it]. Wearing the black rings,” he holds up his hands to show his rings, the same ones he wears on his album cover,  “means you’re more proud, you’re stronger… at least that’s the message. It’s a made up message but that’s what I give to it. It has a meaning of wearing the black rings and you feel proud of it. You made this contract with the Devil and now you’re feeling better or you know this kind of positive message that is still made up but that’s how I felt about it. 

Yeah, I’m not really into any satanic things, black magic or anything. It was a really dark dream about the figure, the Baphomet. Yeah, this figure, as how I sing about it, it raised from nothing on a dark throne and the people were scared but I’m not because I was familiar with this subject. That’s [‘Black Rings’, the title track] is about. I just connected this dream of mine with the black rings I’m actually wearing every single day since –  I don’t know –  over a decade. I know what the people in the [psychobilly] scene they are like – so am I – we like these dark things. It’s just something that really fits in the picture but I didn’t want it to make all the album in this dark way. It’s not really something I wanted to give on to my album but it’s a part of it. It’s a very important part of it and yeah, it’s dark. It’s true how I felt about my dream, about these black rings that I’m wearing. So yeah, this one is a darker one.”

Then, as a complete reversal, the vocalist has included his gender-swapped cover of Barbara Streisand’s ‘Woman in Love’. “That was my objective on the album. The people who are listening to the album song by song, they experience something completely different from one  [track] to another, even musically and about the feeling they got. So one is a darker, dreamy, satanic kind of this and that, and then you get this ‘Woman in Love’ which is a very romantic, very honest love song ,to be honest. So yeah, that’s what I wanted to do. I love it. 

[My final song on ‘Black Rings’ is in Hungarian because] I like to distinguish a few of my origins into the song:  a few lines, a few words in Hungarian because I think that’s how I experience [the world]. It’s interesting to hear a language, especially if we’re talking about Hungarian, it’s something that is not really sound like anything else, so the people find it interesting as to how it sounds. I didn’t wrote it on purpose in Hungarian.  It was one of my songs, it’s a song that is not really good to play on shows because it’s a little bit slow, it’s depressing, it just doesn’t fit in the picture on a live show. But as an album, I think it really fits in the picture [because of these] melancholy things. The words are also very melancholic, about depression and honest feelings about how I felt personally.  I just express myself better in Hungarian.”

When I was young, younger, when I was fifteen, I got into the scene [in Hungary] and it was much bigger. The Hellfreaks was a Hungarian psychobilly band… the Silver Shine, they were famous… Gorilla, of course. I used to go to a Gorilla show every single week. There was event with international bands was playing in Hungary: Demented Are Go, Necromantix, Banane Metallik, so on and so on. Now it seems that it’s just it’s not enough people to keep it alive that’s how I see it …the big bands they don’t really play anymore [in Hungary] so the scene has got very very tight and small. I don’t know where it’s gonna go but I hope one day maybe it’s gonna rise up a little bit!”

Despite his original scene becoming smaller, Balázs has big plans for ‘Black Rings’. “I’m working with a new label: they gonna release the album. It’s gonna happen hopefully very soon within a few weeks  – having the vinyls and making a video with the new guys.  I’m working now with Germans so it’s a little bit hard to make videos because of this” – the frontman is based in Spain –  “but that’s the plan: release the album on vinyl, make a video and I can work on new songs. Next year [I want to] play more festivals.” With an album like ‘Black Rings’ slowly making it’s way across the internet, we’re bound to see King Cat Rhythm bounce back onto festival stages across Europe.

Kate Allvey