Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Kix
Label: Ear Music Records
Release date: 04.08.2014
Length: 47:28
Rating: 4/5
Band reunions fall into the risky-business category. Some bands pick up the road exactly where they left off many years ago. Like nothing happened. After getting back together they keep writing excellent music and enjoy a real bloom in their golden years. Other bands never manage to get back on their feet, and it would have been better if they’d never reunited at all. Kix – Baltimore hair metallers, though for 2014 let’s call them hard rockers instead, who got famous with the hit Don’t Close Your Eyes, have been kicking around stages together again since 2003, but a new studio album just never showed up from anywhere. Right up until this August.
»Rock Your Face Off« is the first album in 19 years, since »Show Business« (1995) came out. And? It’s inspiring, and it works exactly the way an album should from a band that hasn’t made anything for so long and left a clear mark on the rock map with its body of work, one that connoisseurs rate very highly. It picks up at exactly the point where the band closed the chapter with »Show Business«! This is a true successor continuum of great creative credibility, which means Kix are »hot«, the way you can still be hot in your later years.
Brian »Damage« Forsythe is definitely in great creative form! He’s also active in Rhino Buckett, who are constantly busy both on stage and in the studio. His songwriting talents shine again at full intensity on the new Kix album, too. Since 2003 the band has actually been running in the »Blow My Fuse » (1988) lineup, except for bassist Donnie Purnell, who’s been replaced by Mark Schenker.
»Rock Your Face Off« comes with a hard rock dossier that charges along stripped-bare in its guitar phrases, rolling down a dirty, punky track of potently concise rhythms with a stocky sonic sharpness! The premise is hooligan rock ‘n’ roll dosed with the eroticism of bluesy ornaments (transitions, solos), commanded by the cocky, hooligan vocals of frontman Steve Whiteman . No overthinking! Simply arranged. »First shot.« The production is excellent! Alive and maximally contrasty! For this the band once again called on producer Taylor Rhodes, who produced their album “Hot Wire” from 1991. The bass line pulses, digging in shamelessly.
That a band writes tracks like Love Me With Your Top Down (released as the album’s lead single) and Rolin’ in Honey in 2014 is downright fascinating. The songs are flawless »naughty ones«! If the right one gets your girl stripping all on her own in no time, then the combination of rock n’ roll excess in the musical arrangement and the verses in Rolin’ in Honey fires especially effectively. There’s so much sex in it that you start drowning in honey! If this track had hit the scene in the late eighties, it would be an ultimate hard rock classic today.
The riff writing on the album is full of AC/DC-style rhetoric (especially in the naughty Dirty Girls and You’re Gone), rolling on open, simple, adrenaline-greedy rhythms, with the occasional cowbell backing thrown in, too. All of it is coated in a veil of bombast, which the inspired Kix achieve through big melodiousness in the verse-chorus pairings, as well as by adding backing vocal harmonies. All the Right Things opens with an effective touch of a southern rock figure as an overture, then suddenly climbs into a wild rock n’ roll gallop, with a bit of New York Dolls sentiment in the catchy, dandyish chorus, again full of rascally thoughts and perversions. The record bursts with »sticky« innuendos produced by the wet dreams of a lush human imagination.
Let’s hope that with songs like these the guys don’t end up back in their beloved live refuge, a club called Hammerjack’s in Baltimore, but instead carry the new album over to the old European continent, too. Despite a hit ballad in the late eighties, the band stayed unfairly overlooked on the scene. The peak of their career was probably the moment Ratt took them on tour as the opening act.
The adrenaline rush and high-octane prowl of the album’s wild rock n’ roll ride will soon make the room in your jeans shrink dangerously, and the flirty rhythms will force you into constant motion. This kind of »bubble gum disco-ness« that »Rock Your Face Off« delivers in 2014 was, in its bright days, actually meant for parties where people danced to it. For the new album the band picked the best riffs piled up in stock over those 19 years and breathed incredible liveliness and charisma into them. »Rock Your Face Off« doesn’t have one single arrangement fumble and doesn’t let up for a moment in its expressive power!
Everything on it works as if it were made by guys aged 20-24! It’ll blast you straight back to 1990. If you’re into plain rock ‘n’ roll tradition that has to grab you by the throat, greedily and irreversibly, with its punch, then »Rocks Your Face Off« is tailor-made for you. Only a seasoned band that knows exactly what it wants to achieve in the studio can produce this much insight and songwriting concision. It’s been a long road from The Shooze to Kix. And that road between 1977 and 2014 borders on a real odyssey. Men who can boast the wisdom of Moses don’t skimp on their seventh studio album overall, serving up a full measure of mocking naughtiness and hooliganism! They act like they’re 16. And that’s exactly why »Rock Your Face Off« is especially »dangerous«. This is the pinnacle of this year’s hard rock releases. Be sure to spin it at »eleven«
Lineup
Steve Whiteman – vocals, harmonica, tambourine
Brian “Damage” Forsythe – guitar
Ronnie “10/10” Younkins – guitar
Mark Schenker – bass guitar, backing vocals
Jimmy “Chocolate” Chalfant – drums, percussion, backing vocals
Production
Taylor Rhodes
Track list
1. Wheels In Motion
2. You’re Gone
3. Can’t Stop The Show
4. Rollin’ In Honey
5. Rock Your Face Off
6. All The Right Things
7. Dirty Girls
8. Inside Outside Inn
9. Mean Miss Adventure
10. Love Me With Your Top Down
11. Tail On The Wag
12. Rock & Roll Showdown
