King's X - Dogman

After years of clocking in time on the outskirts of the rock n' roll mainstream, King's X finally split ties with longtime producer/manager Sam Taylor, who had helped lift the band out of the Houston underground in the late eighties, and cast out on their own, determined to make a record that was more real and more raw than anything they had attempted before. They linked up with a more modern-minded producer in Brendan O'Brien, who was hot off recent successes with Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots. The year was 1993 and grunge was riding high on the hog after leaving the nascent mainstream metal and prog scenes in it's dust, and King's X had about five years of repressed anger ready to be unleashed in what is not just the clearest and most convincing musical document they ever created, but one of the low-key best hard rock albums ever recorded.

Right off the opening beats of the opening title track, it's obvious to all that this King's X was different from the happy-go-lucky boys of yesteryear - this is the sound of a band that is done pretending, and the sonics of Dogman deliver this message perfectly: dUg's bass is the ever-present blacktop upon which the record's wheels roll. Ty's guitar tone is noticeably less distinctive than usual, doubling down on a fuller, rough-edged beefiness alongside Jerry's in-the-pocket beats which have never sounded this well-rounded. The group's distinctive sound is still audible throughout but the components have been disassembled and rebuilt into a chunkier, far heavier configuration, as their trademark harmonies are dialed back to a more atmospheric (and in the case of slower tunes like "Flies and Blue Skies" and "Sunshine Rain", downright hypnotic) element of the whole package. Heaviness is the name of the game as Dogman alternates between towering slabs of crushing riffs bordering on something you'd hear on a Monolord album and cruising-speed foot-tappers drenched in signature King's X catchiness. That the heavier and plainly more compressed sound of these songs greatly elevates them is a big reason why this album is such a success. Good production can do a lot, but that doesn't diminish the contribution of the raw material that went into making Dogman. Songs like "Pretend", "Shoes", and "Sunshine Rain" would've fit in on any previous King's X record, but the new-found aggression and plainly laid-out cynicism of "Black the Sky", "Don't Care", "Cigarettes", and the other heavier numbers are sailing through dangerous waters that had only been teasingly explored by the band on previous outings. Mixing heaviness and heaven was something of a specialty of their's, but the combination of the loud-and-proud freshness of these songs and a set of much more down-to-earth lyrics make Dogman a refreshing experience. The atmosphere is enhanced and preserved throughout the disc's runtime by a reassuring lack of fat on the bone, every song gleaming on a razor's edge of stripped down writing: only two of the fourteen tracks soldier on past the five minute mark, but none of them feel forced or half-baked.

This album's release was basically the funeral ceremony for the "old" style of music King's X gained notoriety with, and they would never really return to the cheery prog-rock-funk of their early days with the same amount of interest. Instead, the next couple of years we see a more experimental side of King's X with albums like Please Come Home... Mr. Bulbous and Manic Moonlight, paired with an increasing preoccupation with the groove - Ear Candy, Tape Head. They weren't able to come up with an album to knock Dogman off the top of the pile, but that's kind of like saying James Joyce never topped Ulysses - no shit. When people talk about masterpieces, Dogman is the record that always comes straight to my mind: like a fine diamond, it's tougher than any material known to man yet seems to be filled with an unearthly light at the same time.

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