Adam & The Ants suffered what should’ve been a fatal career blow before recording their second full-length, 1980’s Kings of the Wild Frontier: Punk svengali Malcolm McLaren convinced the band’s instrumentalists to split from lead singer Adam Ant and form Bow Wow Wow. As it turns out, however, having to build a new group from the ground up was the best thing to happen to the vocalist. He re-emerged with a striking look best described as “pin-up pirate”—courtesy of ruffled shirts, an ornate military jacket, slouching boots, and facial warpaint—and buoyant music that was more commercially accessible than Adam & The Ants’ post-punk-leaning 1979 debut, Dirk Wears White Sox.
On the giddy pop spiral “Antmusic” and the slipshod shuffle “Dog Eat Dog,” Kings of the Wild Frontier employed what was dubbed the “Burundi beat,” or heavy, danceable tribal rhythms. Elsewhere, Adam Ant and new songwriting collaborator Marco Pirroni went for more subtle hooks—piling on muscular backing vocals as well as guitars that riffed on ominous surf-twang, dizzying disco-punk, and stormy punk. Sly humor also added depth: “Los Rancheros,” for example, paired exaggerated spaghetti western riffs with cartoonish enunciation and whispered nods to Clint Eastwood.
Yet much of Kings of the Wild Frontier’s charm comes from Adam Ant’s commitment to his swaggering, swashbuckling persona. Multiple songs referenced triumphant heroes and powerful warriors—“Jolly Roger” even boasted lyrics about high-seas plundering—while Ant touted his own history-making status on “Don’t Be Square (Be There),” a song proclaiming that “antmusic for sexpeople/sexmusic for antpeople” was the next hot craze. Kings of the Wild Frontier was equally optimistic about the future—in fact, the album fearlessly ushered in the bold New Wave era by merging creative defiance with over-the-top spectacle.