Chris Ingalls: If you’re picking up a Depeche Mode vibe here, it’s not surprising, since alterna-synth guru Alan Moulder mixed the album, and his dark synth-pop fingerprints are all over this. The keyboards create a somewhat forbidding atmosphere, but the song itself transcends the gloominess and the vocals eventually soar into a hopeful, soulful space. A bit more commercially accessible and poppy than a lot of the artists that Editors probably emulate, but that’s not bad; this is a solid, somewhat eclectic single that shows the band making a unique statement. [8/10]
Steve Horowitz: Whose rib cage has a scent? Who builds a house on the sun? This is too deep for me. Give me poetry or give me a beat. Still, there is a tough edge to the sound that is undeniably catchy. Maybe it’s just the beating of a heart. Nothing is gained when the music changes after more than three minutes into the track into something softer, and the silence just makes the guy in the video look silly. [6/10]
Pryor Stroud: Buoyed by synthpop histrionics and shaded by post-punk melancholia, Editors’ “All the Kings” follows singer Tom Smith through a labyrinth of towering synth-pillars that materialize note after note around him. Sonically, the band returns to the synth-centric new wave revivalism they first introduced on 2009’s In This Light and on This Evening, further distancing themselves from the angst-ridden, Echo & The Bunnymen-flavored gloom of their 2005 debut. “All the kings are coming / Marching to the sound from your ribcage,” Smith wails, detailing, with no shortage of hyperbole, love’s capricious tendency to affix a crown to your head and then totally subject you to its will. Years & Years expressed this notion with more economy in “King” (“Oh oh oh / I was a king under your control”), but, here, Editors deliberately expand it into an epic-scale indie-rock tragedy. [8/10]
Chad Miller: The chord progression was pretty interesting throughout, but the track still wound up slightly bland. The track feels like it moves much too slowly for its own good, and the punchy accompaniment doesn’t seem to help at all. [5/10]
SCORE: 6.75