Kings of the Wild Frontier

Kings of the Wild Frontier is the second album by English new wave band Adam and the Ants. It was released in November 1980 by CBS Records International. This album introduced the "Burundi beat" sound to popular music.

Background & recording

After having his previous backing band wooed away by producer Malcolm McLaren to form Bow Wow Wow, Adam Ant recorded Kings of the Wild Frontier with guitarist Marco Pirroni as his new writing partner.

Release

Kings of the Wild Frontier was released on 3 November 1980 by CBS Records in the UK and Epic records internationally. It reached No. 1 in the UK Album Chart, and spawned three hit singles: "Kings of the Wild Frontier", which was released in July and reached No. 2 in the UK Singles Chart; "Dog Eat Dog", which reached No. 4; and "Antmusic", released in December and reaching No. 2, as well as No. 1 in Australia for five weeks. The album was the UK number 1 selling album in 1981 and won Best British Album at the 1982 Brit Awards.
The US version of the album dropped "Making History" in favour of two tracks penned by Ant prior to teaming up with Marco Pirroni, " Physical" and "Press Darlings".
The album was remastered and reissued in 2004 with several bonus tracks.
A multi-disc "Super Deluxe Edition" was released 20 May 2016. It includes a DVD of the long out-of-print Ants in Japan concert video and a CD of a 1981 concert from Chicago. This edition scraped a single week in the UK Album Chart in its own right at number 69 and is considered to be a separate chart hit from the original album

Reception

Reviewing the US edition for The Village Voice in March 1981, Robert Christgau judged the album on the merits of its sexual content and musical quality, ultimately preferring the Clash's ideals on the contemporaneous album Sandinista! as a response to British punk rock nihilism : "The sex is your basic line-drawings-of-spike-heels stuff, redolent of Sex, the haberdashery once owned by Adam's ex-manager. The music, needless to say, is rock and roll, a clever pop-punk amalgam boasting two drummers, lots of chanting, and numerous B-movie hooks. Especially given Adam's art-schooled vocals, I find that the hooks grate, but that may just mean that when it comes to futuristic warriors I prefer Sandinistas."
In his retrospective review, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic called it "one of the great defining albums of its time. There's simply nothing else like it, nothing else that has the same bravado, the same swagger, the same gleeful self-aggrandizement and sense of camp. This walked a brilliant line between campiness and art-house chutzpah, and it arrived at precisely the right time – at the forefront of new wave". Trouser Press cites it as the album where Adam Ant "found his groove".

Legacy

Kings of the Wild Frontier is included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. It is also one of twenty CDs in the Great British Albums box set released by Sony Records in 2012. In 1992, Nine Inch Nails released a cover version of "Physical " on the EP Broken, remade in an industrial rock style with more aggressive guitars and vocals than the original.

Cover

Photographer Pete Ashworth wrote, "On 5 August 1980, prior to his first slot on Top of the Pops, Adam Ant got the band together in a small rehearsal room in Brixton to create a video test. Shooting stills from the monitor screen during the band performance produced some powerful images. Two days later a repeat shoot from the video recording, in a blacked-out studio, produced the sleeve image..."

Track listing

US version

; Cassette version

Super Deluxe Edition

On 20 May 2016, Sony Music/Legacy Recordings issued a lavish four disc super deluxe box set of Kings Of The Wild Frontier. The box included two CDs, a DVD & a 180g gold newly remastered vinyl LP.

CD 1

CD 2, Adam & The Ants Live in [Chicago], 1981

All tracks mastered by Adam Ant & Walter Coelho. Tracks 1-17 previously unissued on CD. Tracks 19 & 20 previously unreleased.

DVD

Gold Vinyl LP

Personnel

; Adam and the Ants

Adam Ant – vocals, acoustic guitar, piano, harmonica
Marco Pirroni – electric guitar
Kevin Mooney – bass
Merrick – drums, production
Terry Lee Miall – drums
Peter Ashworth – sleeve photography
Chart positions

; Album

Chart	Peak position
UK Albums Chart	1
Billboard 200	44