King Dude
Fear
Release Date: Apr 7, 2014
Genre(s): Pop/Rock
Record label: Not Just Religious Music
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Album Review: Fear by King Dude
Fairly Good, Based on 3 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
There is a strange, dank, ill-lighted corner of the popular music world where heavy metal, country, punk, traditional folk music, and various other forms of American outlaw music converge. It stinks like stale cigarettes and spilled beer, but it has some pretty cool old pinball games lurking in that squalid back area. When enjoying the ambiance of this metaphysical dive bar, one tends to feel both a sense of dread and a sense of comfort; as if almost anything can happen here, but almost any transgression might be forgiven too.
Based on rating 7/10
Seattle-based peddler of gloomy darkness and devilish rock music TJ Cowgill's albums as King Dude channel some of Nick Cave's Birthday Party-era intensity and sprawl it out over gritty, ugly blasts of rock with country inflections hidden underneath. It's a strange and often demonic combination, and one that quickly evokes scenes of the untold horrors fabled to lurk in America's silent backwoods and deserted highways. Somewhere between Hasil Adkins, the Gun Club, and Death in June, King Dude's husky growl spins tales of death, desertion, and general bleakness over the course of Fear's 13 tunes, warping something horrific out of traditional blues elements, hard rock attitudes, and the most desolate breed of Americana.
Based on rating 2/5
I am afraid of everything. I am scared of not getting what I want as much as I’m scared of getting it; I’m scared of dying as much as I’m scared of living or doing anything — change as much as stagnation. But this isn’t about death — or, I guess it isn’t. That would be too obvious. I ….