King's X - King's X

With each successive release it seemed like King's X took two steps forward and one back, each time inching closer and closer to breakout mainstream success, only to have it snatched from their fingers - the consistently high praise they received from critics was never enough to sustain anything more than a larger-than-normal cult following. Album number three, Faith Hope Lope, took them father up the charts than they had ever gone prior, and it seemed reasonable to believe that a follow up of similar quality would be enough to take them over the top and into the promised land.

I've written about this album before, so writing a similar overview of King's X again seems redundant, so just the big takeaways: King's X is a stronger album than Faith Hope Love on almost every level and I'm very surprised that it wasn't more popular than it turned out to be. The songs are shorter and more focused, the production is finally tuned to excellence, and the riffs and grooves are second only to Dogman. Seriously, listen to "Black Flag" and "What I Know About Love" - 'nuff said. The've abandoned the power ballads of yesteryear in favor of softer pieces gussied-up with wisps of synthesizers and sitar flourishes, but you can't win them all I guess. Most importantly, though, is the overall tone: finally, King's X gets mad! Sort of. Not really "mad", I guess, but they've at least cut back on the childlike happiness schtick which had really begun to sour by Faith Hope Love and traded it in for a more grounded point of view bordering on a kind of optimistic cynicism, clearly glimpsed in lean and mean numbers like "Prisoner", "Silent Wind", and the instant classic "Lost In Germany". It has less of the song quality whiplash that plagued their earlier records and is perhaps the most consistent album in their discography.

The other big change with King's X was the end of the band's relationship with longtime producer Sam Taylor at the time of the album's release, marking a significant shift in their sound that would become immediately evident on successive works. His impact on their sound is difficult to pin down exactly as he described his part in the group's trademark sound as quite small: 

"If I did anything, I gave King's X a license to be true to themselves" - Sam Taylor, 1996

More than anything, King's X marked the end of an era for this band and they would never make another record that sounded quite like their first four again - for better or worse.

B+

King's X - Faith Hope Love

After the success of Gretchen Goes to Nebraska, King's X found itself finally getting a taste of the big time after graduating from underground critical favorites to legitimate up-and-coming talent to watch. Fans held their breath for the hotly anticipated follow up and would receive it after only a scant year in October of 1990 when Faith Hope Love hit the street. Buttressed by the radio success of maybe their most distinctly Beatles-esque track ever, "It's Love", record number three shot up the charts and reached Gold status in the US, as befits it's lavishly gilded cover artwork. Post release it seemed a headwind was finally blowing in the band's direction as they scored opening slots on national tours for heavyweight acts like AC/DC and Living Colour. While their follow up to Faith Hope Love failed to continue their upward trajectory, I've always found the success of this album kind of strange in comparison to their other discs.

First off, credit where credit is due - the front half of Faith Hope Love is about as perfect as one could ask for, starting off with a song that surprisingly isn't six minutes long and full of synth-atmosphere stuff with "We Are Finding Who We Are" before launching into "It's Love" and the infectious groove of "The Fine Art of Friendship" (yeah, seriously). As we move further through the album the band starts to loosen the reins a bit and let some more progressive elements come out of the woodwork, most noticeably on the nearly ten-minute title track, the grating "Talk to You", and what is definitely the most memorable time that I've heard a producer so blatantly display his personal aural stamp on a song with "We Were Born to Be Loved". And here we have the biggest problem with Faith Hope Love: there's no payoff to justify it's run time, which extends ten minutes past the previous two records for little gain. "Faith Hope Love" goes on for approximately twice as long as it should (I actually thought the song was done when I checked the time and saw it there was another five and a half fucking minutes), and "Legal Kill" is a weirdly bad-taste move for a band that otherwise so consistently personifies the hippie/love stereotype - maybe a concerted effort to capture the Christian market? I dunno. What really makes listening to this record such a strangely depressing chore for me is the juxtaposition of the almost annoyingly cheerful lyrics held up against the shit the band was going through at the time. I can only imagine how awful it must have felt to sing songs praising a god that you were pretty sure hated you to a crowd of people who you strongly suspected might jump at the chance to throw you to the dogs (oh wait that actually happened) for breaking their rules. Well.

So yeah, Faith Hope Love. An OK piece of material but decidedly a letdown coming off the heels of their previous work, but even though the elusive commercial success they sought never really materialized, King's X was due to turn in two of their greatest albums ever one after the other - stay tuned.

C+

King's X - Gretchen Goes to Nebraska

Out of the Silent Planet put King's X "out there". Gretchen Goes to Nebraska put them on the map by honing nearly every edge of the rough diamond that was their sound. Just as the cover artwork suggested, it was a portal to a different realm, solidifying a sonic template for the band's immediate future and garnering them a (relatively) large amount of critical and commercial buzz. Also, I'm just now seeing the band member's faces on the trees right there, so that's pretty sweet.

In a lot of ways, Gretchen Goes to Nebraska is simply a more fully realized take on the type of material found on Out of the Silent Planet: the mix of hard rock chunk and gospel-lite vocal harmonies paired with decidedly progressive or at least alternative composition is as present as ever, with a bigger emphasis (and with a bigger success rate) on a more knotty, intricate songwriting style that allowed the group more room to flex their muscles. Several of the songs contained herein have remained in live rotation ever since and this was one of two times that King's X forced their way into mainstream rock radio on the back of the anthemic swagger of "Over My Head". So why don't I like it? Well, clearly I do, that's why I'm bothering to expend energy on writing about it, or I hate it - either way I'm burning calories.

I've actually always had a tough time getting through this whole thing. "Out of the Silent Planet" has that trademark slithering King's X riff but it goes on for about 2 minutes too long, and that's kind of just a good description of Gretchen Goes to Nebraska overall: good ideas, just maybe off somehow in small ways. Usually it was length ("Fall on Me", "The Burning Down"), other times they got too proggy for their own good ("Everybody Knows a Little Bit of Something", "Pleiades"), but I always felt that for every hot rod like "Don't Believe It (It's Easier Said Than Done)" there was a clunker around the bend to ruin the disc's flow. Things are certainly helped by the improved production heard here - no more weird Dixie™ paper plate drum heads or bass parts recorded at 30,000 leagues down and overall Gretchen is a big leap up in terms of fidelity across the board. Producer Sam Taylor and engineer Steve Ames' (...hum?!) influence is felt even more strongly on this record than previously and it's fascinating to here the difference between the Houston-specific style of the first 4 King's X CDs that was thanks in no small part to the work of these guys and the decidedly heavier, more compressed production of the material after Dogman, but that's skipping a couple of releases. As it stands (and as I listen to it again while writing this),  Gretchen Goes to Nebraska stands tall among King's X hefty discography for it's ballsy combination of high-falootin' prog rock aspirations ("Pleiades", cough) and deep-fried Southern boogie roots. Yes, you can use that description for a lot of this band's material, but the fact that Gretchen so vividly captures that elusive qualia of what fans will invariably reach to when asked "What do they sound like?" is a partial explanation for it's considerable staying power.

B

King's X - Out of the Silent Planet

The debut album of King's X in what would prove to be their permanent lineup and band name is a record that is both noticeably dated and yet unmistakably ear-catching. An uncommon mix of gospel, funk, and hard rock with a progressive flourish, Out of the Silent Planet put the band on the map after nearly a decade of gig work and showcased the particular blend of styles they had been honing. As with most first albums, it's a mixed bag in terms of quality, but the balance of good to bad on display here is impressive - truthfully, the album's biggest problem lies not with its material but its production, which is easily the element of King's... X's (?) sound that has aged the least gracefully - at the end of the day, this album was released in 1988 after all.

Song-wise, Out of the Silent Planet has the same consistency and self-editing issues that will follow King's X for most of their career. The front half is basically perfect, with songs that come and go in just the right amount of time while showcasing the group's MO terrifically, and tracks like "Power of Love", "Wonder", and "Sometimes" are solid gold as Ty Tabor's guitar snarls out chunky riffs one after the other underneath dUg Pinnick's powerhouse vox. The record starts to lose momentum in the home stretch and never really climbs back up to earlier highs, with some overlong pieces that don't have the same spark as prior songs -  "What Is This", "Far, Far Away", and the barely-tolerable-as-a-closer "Visions", with only the infuriating earnestness of "Shot of Love" saving the day - incidentally containing a similar chorus structure with "Power of Love", featuring dUg imploring the crowd to help him sing along - can't say I miss this element of their sound. Jerry Gaskill does his best with his kit (featuring that 80's darling, gated reverb) which sounds like it was replaced at the eleventh hour with a pair of chopsticks and a plastic bucket while dUg's bass sounds like it was recorded underwater at times - this is a guitar and vocals-based record, plain and simple, striking a balance between the burgeoning progressive/death metal scene of the early 90's and the progressive rock revival of the same period, arriving a bit too early and sounding way too idiosyncratic to be lumped into any specific subgenres. While this first step garnered them a good amount of press, it wouldn't be until their warmly remembered 2nd disc a short year later that really began to make waves. Beyond that, Out of the Silent Planet still holds up well as the band's first major release.

C+  

Fallujah - Dreamless

I spoke pretty highly of Fallujah's preceding album The Flesh Prevails as I and most everyone who heard it agreed it was an excellent record dragged down by an anchor of a bad production job, clocking in at an unfortunate DR score of 3 (allegedly the vinyl mix is of largely better sonic quality). It's been two years since then and we're now presented with the group's latest work, Dreamless.

First things first: yes, the production is definitely better on this disc than the standard mix of The Flesh Prevails. No, it still isn't very good as it only raises the DR needle up to a 5, but it's certainly a step in the right direction -- and to be honest, I never really had a huge problem with the production of the previous record as the brick-walled solidity of the thing seemed to fit with the blast-beat laden tech death angle they seemed to be going for: a dark, moonlight glacial shelf of an album. It doesn't excuse all of it, but I could get past it to pick up what the band was putting down, and in any case Dreamless sounds almost like the lost second disc of the double album it sounds like it was supposed to be a part of with The Flesh Prevails, so expect a similar sonic palette here: Andrew Baird's drumming is still top-notch and the guitar duo of Andrew Carstairs and Brian James put in some excellent work, particularly on the standout tracks "The Void Alone" and "Scar Queen". Fallujah continues to experiment with a blend of progressive death metal and ambient trance-scapes, with Dreamless featuring a much greater emphasis on the softer, more ethereal aspects of their sound than previous albums ever have, to mixed results. Lori Tezler contributes some suitably airy vocals to several tracks to nice effect a la Roniit Alkayam's work on the previous album, but the guitar playing here really deserves mention, as the first half of Dreamless in particular features some seriously spectacular fretwork.

The disc is roughly divided into two halves, with the front half containing several heavier pieces that gradually decline in intensity as things progress, developing into a home stretch of songs that explore the group's interest in trance and ambience even further than previous tracks like "Alone With You". These deeper forays into electronica strike me as less self-assured and well-constructed as those found on their previous record - "Fidelio" and "Les Silences" stick out from the rest of the compositions in a major way, and while I appreciate a break from the breakneck speed of the other tracks, these detours just don't mesh with the rest of Dreamless, nor do the one-off inclusion of clean vocals from Alex Hofmann on "Wind for Wings". Happily, though, a couple of terrific barn-stormers round out the package in the title track and album closer "Lacuna". While the less metallic elements of their sound needs some refinement, Fallujah is firing on all cylinders with the remainder of Dreamless: the good far outweighs the bad here.

C+

Haken - Enter the 5th Dimension

Listening to Affinity and Restoration reminded me how long it's been since I've actually popped this thing in and gave it a whirl. Now I don't remember exactly how tough I was on Restoration back when it first came out, because holy shit is Enter The 5th Dimension a lot rougher than I had ever remembered.

It starts out strong - "Blind" is a solid track even though the weak-ass tissue-paper production render the guitars thinner-sounding than an Al Stewart album, and I'm always up for obscure samples plunked down in the middle of the song, but the solo section definitely goes on for too long a la "A Nightmare to Remember". What's really impressive is how the Restoration remake "Darkest Light" is almost half as long while still not giving up anything essential. "Black Seed" continues this trend of not having needed much work to update for Restoration - the redux "Earthlings" differs slightly in lyrics and vocal arrangements but is otherwise a strict upgrade with excellent atmosphere and The Mountain-esque harmony singing.

Things start to slip past that, though - "Manifolds" is a functional instrumental but it pales in comparison to their rare future instrumentals or even the instrumental sections in later songs. "Souls" features a rare acoustic bit opening things up and is the song I was most looking forward to in a rewritten form, while closer "Snow" provided the template for the prog snob panty dropper "Crystallized" at a distinctly slower BPM and with perhaps some unfortunate lyrical choices -- the Restoration revitalization, despite dragging towards the end, is a more satisfying experience on all counts.

Held up against the polished and well-honed material on Restoration, Enter The 5th Dimension looks pretty rough, but it was a product of it's time: clearly a band experimenting with a lot of different ideas, concerned more with just collaborating together and seeing what they could put together -- certainly not something that can be held against them particularly harshly.

C-

Haken - Affinity

Arriving three years after their well-received third record The Mountain, British progressive metal standard bearers Haken's latest selection Affinity sticks out from the rest of their catalog for a couple of reasons, the biggest being that this is the first full-fledged LP featuring the band's new bass player, Connor Green, who replaced Thomas MacLean - one of the founding members of the group. Green's first recording with the band was a stopgap EP entitled Restoration, which featured material fashioned from the the outfit's hard-to-find demo album, Enter The 5th Dimension. It was tough to figure out whether Green was a good fit as I didn't find anything memorable about the bass work he contributed to Restoration, but with Affinity it seems like he's had more of a chance to lock in with the rest of the boys and deliver some solid parts.

Rather than go for the more literal concept album experience they've delivered in the past, Haken has opted to evoke more of a sci-fi / 80s Blood Dragon-esque feeling with Affinity. This new approach is lamp shaded immediately with the electronic tones of opener "affinity.exe" and is brought right up to the surface with the excellent "1985" which contains a surprisingly tasteful resurrection of old-school electronic drum hits and synth runs. Other highlights include the excellent pop hopefulness of "Earthrise", the Mountain-esque, deep space serenity of closer "Bound by Gravity", and a less than ideal amount of the 15 minute heavyweight "The Architect". This piece is the hinge the rest of Affinity pivots around, but except for a functional yet workmanlike opening displaying some of the most transparent bits of Dream Theater influenced material they've put together and a criminally underused Einar Solberg (of Leprous) who's black-ice vocals are relegated to the closing few minutes of the song. The other material found here doesn't so much "suffer" from post-Restoration Haken's sound but rather just kind of reinforce the direction they seem to be heading in -- sleeker production, less interesting vocal arrangements (The Mountain's harmonies seem almost alien compared to the single-voice approach heard here) and a bit of a missing element of the fun, wacky, admittedly gimmicky band that produced songs like "Celestial Elixir" and "Cockroach King". I'm not really going to miss the circus music breaks, but it's what that kind of stuff represented: unpredictability. They broke out the goofy shit just often enough to add an element of "At any moment this song could devolve into death growls and Muppet sound effects" that helped Haken stand out from the legions of other progressive metal Dream Theater tribute bands all playing different flavors of the same stuff. And when you strip away all those quirky "Haken-y" things from the music, stuff starts to sound kinda generic. In the end Affinity is just a little too sleek and polished for it's own good.

Edit: So since I wrote this I've had some more time to digest this record (and it's awesome packaging). I've softened up on it on the whole - the production is obviously better on a physical copy and getting a chance to look at the lyrics to figure out what the hell Ross is singing is a plus, but my first kneejerk reaction that Affinity wasn't going to replace The Mountain or even Aquarius as my favorite Haken album still holds. That doesn't change the fact that "1985", "Bound by Gravity", and "Lapse" are excellent songs, though.

B-