This album worried me before I even heard it. It has the sort of cover that screams "leave me on the shelf!" at me even if the album title sounds like it should be a bowel-shaking Terrorizer meets Cannibal Corpse sludge fest, even if the picture of KING KOHN doesn't. Then I read the PR and find out he self proclaims to make "Acoustic Death Metal Hippie Folk Rock." Then I was afraid. I was very afraid.
Then I was shocked that the album opens with some really nice classical piano lulling us into a false sense of security before the vocals come in and ruin everything as he appears to be trying to sing like Jello Biafra on maximum vibrato at all times but not quite having the voice for it and sounding like he's singing what can you do with a drunken sailor. Actually, the lyrics are all social conscience protest song stuff, only they at times tend to the juvenile like on Buzz off To The Man: almost like he has a huge spliff on and it's the coolest thing he can think of to say. The rest of the words are similarly stupid stoned nonsense backed by off the wall music that could work well with a different singer and better lyrical input.
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That is a pattern throughout this album that the music might work with someone else fronting it or different lyrics. It's like he wants to make a concept album on the lines of Lou Reed's 'New York' with socially conscious messages about Money and Charity but because its so badly sung, he is doomed to be only for the hardcore members of his local Occupy group in Austin, Texas. Oh and I pity his friend Johnny whose death he sings about. I would hate to have that as my tribute song as it sounds more like an aural insult.
By the time I got to Let The Music Out (the penultimate track) it was much more a case of "let me out of the room now", and let me put something better on instead.
King Kohn online
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