Stooge
Album #6 for the Texas trio is pretty familiar territory for them, but something is not quite the same.
Ear Candy contains some of the most sorrowful songs on a King’s X album. This is rather fitting considering this is the last studio album King’s X released on major label Atlantic Records. After years of critical acclaim, they failed to truly catch on with the mainstream, thus Ear Candy represents the end of an era for the band. There are some uplifting moments in places, but it sets an overall darker tone than their previous albums. There also aren’t many songs that are heavy in terms of the riffing. This may scare away some metal fans out there.
In spite of these changes, I enjoy a number of songs on the album. The problem for me is that most of them fall in the first half of the album. “The Train”, “(Thinking and Wondering) What I’m Gonna Do”, “Sometime”, “A Box”, “Looking for Love”, and “Mississippi Moon” is about as strong as any start to one of their albums. However, past the first six tracks only “Lies In The Sand (The Ballad of…)” stands out from the pack. I wouldn’t go as far as to call the rest of the album filler, but some of the other songs fail to catch on like other King’s X songs do without effort.
A pretty good release by King’s X, but it’s not as consistently entertaining as the 5 albums that precede it.