"TAPEHEAD" by KING'S X (1998, Metal Blade Records) is the newest release from this multi-talented band out of Texas. After six fantastic releases and a greatest hits package with Atlantic Records, they were given the boot by Atlantic for a failure to produce music that could generate interest in the cookie-cutter world of top 40. In retrospect it can be pointed out that Atlantic did absolutely nothing to promote the fact that they had signed one of the most unique and talented bands in the music world. Metal Blade, a label well known for it's integrity and it's policy of allowing the band total control of all musical input, scooped them up in a heartbeat. TAPEHEAD is, to put it simply, as brilliant as any other KING'S X release, and a great way for the band to kick off a long and prosperous relationship with Metal Blade.
But getting back to a band's musical evolution if I may, while TAPEHEAD is predictable in some ways, it blows the door off your CD player with twice as many surprises. The last original album on Atlantic, "Ear Candy", found the band experimenting with funk elements woven into their unorthodox hard rock sound, as well as a few twists that can only be referred to as "psychedelic". With TAPEHEAD, that style continues to permeate the overall KING'S X sound much more than on previous releases, but the band also seems to fuse the new style with the heavier, more bone-jarring approach they had on the 1994 release "Dogman", thus giving us something on the wild and funky side with the momentum of a runaway truck. TAPEHEAD is a baseball bat filled with magic pixie-dust, slammed upon the cranium of modern music. All of its subtle tickles are followed by the contrast of heavy punches, and vice versa.
KING'S X is, and always has been , Doug Pinnick on lead vocals and Bass, Ty Tabor on Guitars and vocals, and Jerry Gaskill on Drums and vocals. TAPEHEAD is 13 new songs from this talent supercharged trio. The album kicks off with "Groove Machine", a hard and heavy rocker heavily laden with funk overtones. Other heavy ventures on the album are the fantastic "Happy", with it's KING'S X trademark "big fat" bass of Doug Pinnick sounding like a Panzer division driving through an avalanche, and "World", a fast, hard-hitting number that sounds like a throwback to the self-titled "King's X" album from 1992. Ty Tabor takes the lead vocals on "Ocean", with it's strummy guitars and light-as-air vocals, but otherwise the entire album's vocals are handled by the vocal powerhouse that is Doug Pinnick. Doug's vocals on TAPEHEAD are as smooth yet powerful as always, yet somewhat subdued in places to give KING'S X more of a modern rock sound than on earlier releases. Nowhere to be found on this album are the power-throated, gospel-like vocals like on earlier songs like 1989's "Over My Head", but Pinnick delivers with style on this album that is just rock-solid on every level.
Other songs include the dark, yet oddly playful "Hate You", with it's "groovy" guitar that sounds like Jimi Hendrix forced sideways through a broken amplifier while lubricated with the inside of a lava lamp. "Fade" and "Over and Over" have hooks a mile long that grab you instantly, and are listener-friendly enough that they could provide KING'S X with a genuine radio smash or two. Even so, these tracks remain hard hitting and loyal to the KING'S X sound.
But the most oddball track comes to us at the close of the album with "Walter Bela Farkas", a track that after a dozen or more plays of this album STILL makes me laugh out loud. Recorded live in New York, the band announces it as a song they are "writing right now". What follows is a bizarre Jazz-fusion mix of improv and spontaneity, with Doug and Jerry pounding their bass and drums, respectively, in a all-out frenzy, while Ty's guitars drift in and out like feedback from a guitar kicked with combat boots and left for rubble. Over the top of the entire song, screechy "Nugent-like" shrieks of terror come from the throat of the GALACTIC COWBOYS Wally Farkas. The GALACTIC COWBOYS and KING'S X have been long time friends and share the same sense of humor, which is apparent on this nutty, wonky tune. I have said before that when a band has fun, an audience has fun, and there is no doubt that the fans had as good a time hearing "Walter Bela Farkas" live as you will hearing it on the CD. KING'S X hits you with some deep concepts, and in the end they leave with a joke and a bow.
A solid release after a shaky period for the band, TAPEHEAD is what KING'S X music is all about today. Their first self-produced album on a label where they are as free as they care to be to pursue any direction, KING'S X proves once again that right where they want to be is right where we want them. Ten years of evolution has shown us that ANOTHER ten years of evolution will almost certainly find the band doing what they do better than almost any band today, and that is doing what comes natural, and making a slice of rock and roll that can't quite be defined under one category, unless there is a rock and roll subgroup called "Perfection".
Robert "Torgo" Sedler
