Label: Frontiers Music Srl.
Release date: September 13, 2019
Production: KXM
Album length: 61.32 min
Genre: Hard Rock / Cross Over / Alternative Metal
Rating: 7.5 / 10
The acronym KXM covers the names of three colorful musicians: dUg Pinnick, George Lynch and Ray Luzier (“Korn X Mob”). Last September the project put out its third studio album, two and a half years after its predecessor “Scatterbrain.” Considering how constantly busy these guys are with other musical ventures, the new record followed its predecessor in a hurry. KXM is a kind of pressure valve that lets these three exceptional musicians live out the dreams they can’t chase in their home bands.
KXM were born in early 2013 out of a jam. And that’s how they write music, too. Through jamming. Tracks develop fairly spontaneously until they reach a shape that’s good enough to record for an album, starting from a basic guitar phrase. They grow around Lynch’s phrase, which Luzier and Pinnick graft onto with their own distinctive approaches and thoroughly unique charisma.
No question about it. The chemistry is here. The magic too. It still sparks and comes across as something truly special. George Lynch once again delivers some seriously razor-sharp guitar phrases, through a hugely fat guitar tone, which gives the phrases a distinctive “lower-sounding” sheen, while Luzier and Pinnick, with the trademark touches of two absolute musical oddballs, pile a specific “groove kinetics” and incredibly dynamic rhythm onto those phrases, driving the tracks along on a high atmospheric suspension. Lynch is in outstanding form for the soloing again. Thrilling, sparkling and exploratory all the way through! Along the way he definitely reminds you a few times of his sheer virtuosity, when he sails into supersonic bursts of speed-demon excitement, but in the instrumental passages he likes to flirt with solutions that, in the modulations, can drift far from the predictable realms of hard rock, and he flirts with jazzy lines too.
The music carries a dark vibe. Pinnick is a one-of-a-kind vocalist who, for his age, still has an incredibly piercing vocal voltage, and it’s built, of course, on a pronounced injection of soul acrobatics, much like what the indestructible Glenn Hughes does in another corner of the music world. The album is mostly “cut and played on the first take.” No special extra studio tricks of polishing and after-the-fact prettifying. It has a strikingly live sound and feels “like a concert.” The production is distinctly “fat” and “full-sounding,” leaning heavily on thick, sharpened low-end tones.
The songs really do feel like they came straight out of a jam. The scarcity of motifs and the repeated repetition of the lead motifs, which dUg Pinnick tries to liven up with soul inserts in the vocal melodies, hint at that too. Even though Lynch is first and foremost a hard rock guitarist, the result of all three musicians working together is an amazingly successful blend of the three home bands they belong to. The music can be “infectious” even for those of you who are hooked on cross over acts like Living Colour, Faith No More, or even Red Hot Chili Peppers. But “Circle Of Dolls” doesn’t stir up the same interest and excitement as, say, its predecessor “Scatterbrain.” It feels like KXM hit some kind of expressive zenith that closes out their evolution. Maybe that feeling comes simply from the fact that there’s too much music on the album and that it really was made on the first take, with its creators calling it a day and being pleased with themselves too early.
What adds some trouble to the whole thing is precisely this fixed template in the relationship between the three building blocks of KXM’s music, which has hit its expressive ceiling. There’s simply too much music. Over an hour. The tricks repeat and the album can start to wear the listener out. Cut down to 40 minutes, with a bit more polish and arrangement aesthetics, it would definitely have benefited.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
01. War of Words
02. Mind Swamp
03. Circle Of Dolls
04. Lightning
05. Time Flies
06. Twice
07. Big As The Sun
08. Vessel of Destruction
09. A Day Without Me
10. Wide Awake
11. Shadow Lover
12. Cold Sweats
13. The Border
Lineup:
dUg Pinnick – vocals, bass
George Lynch – guitar
Ray Luzier – drums
