''Empire'' is the second album by British

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...

band

Kasabian Kasabian ( ) are an English rock band formed in Leicester in 1997 by lead vocalist Tom Meighan, guitarist and occasional vocalist Sergio Pizzorno, guitarist Chris Karloff, and bassist Chris Edwards. Drummer Ian Matthews joined in 2004. Karlof ...

, released in August 2006. The album went on to No. 1 in the

UK Albums Chart The Official Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales and (from March 2015) audio streaming in the United Kingdom. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts C ...

upon its release and was preceded by the release of new single "

Empire An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...

" on 24 July 2006. According to

Tom Meighan Thomas Peter Meighan (, born 11 January 1981) is an English singer and musician, best known as the former lead vocalist for the rock band Kasabian. He enjoyed large-scale success with Kasabian in the 2000s and 2010s. He is said to have an in ...

in an interview on the album with the ''

NME ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...

'' in early 2006, "Empire" is a word used by the band to describe something that is good. As of 3 May 2017 the album has sold over 800,000 copies in the band's home country of the UK. ''Empire'' was the first full Kasabian album to feature drummer Ian Matthews, who was recruited in 2005. Lead songwriter and guitarist Christopher Karloff left the band in early 2006, during recording of the album, having contributed the music for three tracks.

Critical reception

''Empire'' received mixed-to-positive reviews.

Music critic ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' defines music criticism as "the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres". In this sense, it is a branch of mus ...

s were divided by the band's choices in production and lyricism, despite many considering them better than their self-titled debut. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 65, based on 20 reviews. Dan Martin of ''

'' found the album better than their self-titled debut, praising the band for mixing all their influences into tracks that can be called their own, saying that: "Through sheer, bloody-minded relief, weapons-graded stamina and a big, big imagination, Kasabian have willed themselves into brilliance." Jason MacNeil of ''

PopMatters ''PopMatters'' is an international online magazine of cultural criticism that covers aspects of popular culture. ''PopMatters'' publishes reviews, interviews, and essays on cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, fi ...

'' found some production choices on the tracks off-putting but said that ''Empire'' shows the band's potential of crafting better projects in their given ilk, concluding that: "On the whole, it’s a good second step, but hopefully step three is more in line with the shock and awe the first album contained." Chris Salmon of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' noted that Kasabian's boastful talk of the album resulted in a mixed bag of tracks that fall just shy of their claim, in terms of influenced production and lyricism, saying that: "While ''Empire'' isn't an exceptional record, it offers enough to be described as a good one."

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

's David Jeffries commended the band for taking a grand-scale approach to mixing their influences into an

Oasis In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment'ksar''with its surrounding feeding source, the palm grove, within a relational and circulatory nomadic system.” The location of oases has been of critical imp ...

-sized project, but felt they forgot to write catchy tracks to lead the album, saying that: "Lost in all this is the instantly grabbing songwriting of Kasabian's debut, and to some extent, the bandmembers themselves, who often seem to be riding this swirl instead of guiding it." Despite praising a few tracks, Lauren Murphy of

Entertainment.ie ''Entertainment.ie'' is an Irish web company based in Dublin. The company provides news and reviews of programs and films for TV and the cinema. It also provides information on upcoming comedies, festivals, theater shows and music in Ireland, a ...

felt the album was just a retread of their debut with Tom Meighan's vocals starting to sound strained throughout, concluding with: "If Kasabian hadn't attempted to build their Empire by recounting its wonderment prematurely, it might have stood a chance; instead, their audacity just proves them to be, unsurprisingly, more geezer, less Caesar." Peter Relic of ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...

'' criticized the album for sounding like a rehash of established British rock bands and Meighan for having weak vocal delivery on the tracks, calling it "miles worse than their shallow but tasty first, its big-budget production only making its shortcomings more apparent."

Track listing

Personnel

Adapted from the ''Empire'' liner notes. Kasabian *

–

lead vocals The lead vocalist in popular music is typically the member of a group or band whose voice is the most prominent melody in a performance where multiple voices may be heard. The lead singer sets their voice against the accompaniment parts of t ...

backing vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are use ...

Sergio Pizzorno Sergio Lorenzo "Serge" Pizzorno (born 15 December 1980) is a British guitarist, singer and songwriter, best known for his work with the rock band Kasabian. He is Kasabian's primary songwriter since the departure of co-composer Christopher Karl ...

–

guitars The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

synthesizers A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

, backing vocals, lead vocals *Chris Edwards – bass,

Wurlitzer The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to as simply Wurlitzer, is an American company started in Cincinnati in 1853 by German immigrant (Franz) Rudolph Wurlitzer. The company initially imported stringed, woodwind and brass instruments ...

piano * Ian Matthews –

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

Additional musicians * Joana Glaza – backing vocals * Farhat Bouallagui –

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

and

viola The viola ( , also , ) is a string instrument that is bow (music), bowed, plucked, or played with varying techniques. Slightly larger than a violin, it has a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of ...

* Bouzid Ezzedine – violin * Jazzer Haj Youssef – violin * James Banbury –

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

* Jo Archard – violin * Fiona McCapra – violin * Vince Greene – viola * Nick Attwood –

trombone The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the Standing wave, air column ...

* Craig Crofton –

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to pr ...

* Gary Alesbrook –

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

Technical personnel *

Jim Abbiss Jim Abbiss is a British music producer, best known for his work on records including the debut album of Editors ('' The Back Room''), Arctic Monkeys' Mercury Music Prize winning debut album, ''Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not'', Ka ...

, Kasabian –

production Production may refer to: Economics and business * Production (economics) * Production, the act of manufacturing goods * Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services) * Production as a stati ...

* Barny –

recording A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, ...

, mixing * "Beatle Ben" – recording assistant * Owen Skinner – mixing assistant * Andy Wallace – mixing * Jean-Loup Morette – strings engineering *

George Marino George Marino (April 15, 1947 – June 4, 2012) was an American mastering engineer known for working on albums by rock bands starting in the late 1960s. Biography Marino was born on April 15, 1947, in the New York City borough The Bronx. He at ...

– mastering *

Julie Verhoeven Julie Verhoeven (born 16 May 1969) is a British illustrator and designer who has collaborated with brands such as Louis Vuitton, Versace and Peter Jensen. While she is recognised primarily for her work in fashion, she has also contributed illus ...

– illustrations * Andy Hayes – design and layout

Charts and certifications

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications

References

External links

Official websiteBMG site – Kasabian (Japan)BMG site – ''Empire'' (Australia)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Empire (Kasabian Album) 2006 albums Albums produced by Jim Abbiss Kasabian albums RCA Records albums