Kingdom Come

Few bands ignited such immediate controversy with a debut single, and fewer still encountered comparable hostility, as did the German hard rock outfit Kingdom Come upon unleashing "Get It On." Many listeners assumed the track signaled a reunion of Led Zeppelin's surviving members, prompting some critics to dismiss the group as "Kingdom Clone." After securing a deal with Polydor, frontman Lenny Wolf assembled the lineup and tracked the material alongside producer Bob Rock, an engineer and musician who would later achieve success with Mötley Crüe, Bon Jovi, and Metallica. Once "Get It On" reached several American radio outlets ahead of its official release, speculation surrounding the unidentified act created widespread curiosity. Those Led Zeppelin parallels helped drive initial commercial momentum, resulting in gold-certified shipments, while the single itself registered as a notable AOR success and the band joined the Monsters of Rock tour alongside Van Halen and the Scorpions. A sharp backlash quickly materialized, however, and the remaining tracks from the self-titled debut struggled to register on radio playlists. Kingdom Come next entered the studio with Keith Olsen producing the follow-up. Issued in 1989, In Your Face neither dispelled the Led Zeppelin associations nor halted the group's waning commercial appeal. During the subsequent tour the original lineup disintegrated, leaving only Wolf. He persisted under the Kingdom Come name with the 1990 release of Hands of Time, yet that album failed to chart meaningfully in the United States, and the rise of grunge effectively ended the act's prospects there. The band nevertheless continued to issue new recordings through the 1990s and into the following decade, its thirteenth studio album, Outlier, appearing in 2013, though distribution remained largely confined to Wolf's native Germany.