Review Summary: A compilation of re-recorded outtakes masquerading as a proper album
Perhaps pushing too far into unfamiliar territory with the last couple albums, King’s X looks back to the past with their tenth full-length album. Black Like Sunday is a collection of songs that the band had originally written in the eighties when they were still operating under the Sneak Preview moniker re-recorded in a contemporary context. It’s the sort of move that could be deemed an attempted comeback through a more cynical lens but reads much more like a simple return to normalcy after the recent rounds of experimental dabbling.
While the album’s backstory isn’t integral to understanding it, there are noticeable hints of youthful exuberance running throughout. It’s a very straightforward album by the band’s typical standards with the track lengths generally hovering around the three-minute mark and the songs driven by fast tempos and more prominent choruses. The lyrics are also more direct than they’d been since the nineties, primarily preoccupied with themes of relationship and the sort of identity crises that can only come with adolescence.
Alas, this approach has the unfortunate side effect of highlighting the band’s lethargic musicianship at the time. The guitar tone feels a little flat and the vocals have a rather tired air to them, making for performances that aren’t bad so much as just feeling phoned in. It gets to the point where the slowest songs end up being the best with “Down” in particular standing out for its more melancholic bent. The near hour runtime also doesn’t help though in an ironic twist, the extended eleven-minute jam on “Johnny” might be the album’s most striking number.
With Black Like Sunday essentially being a compilation of re-recorded outtakes masquerading as a proper album, it feels unfair to compare it to the rest of the King’s X discography. It doesn’t have the aura of a washed-up band trying to recapture their glory days so much as just wanting to give some old songs a home. One can imagine these songs working better with more energetic musicianship behind them though even if the band had been able to do studio justice to these songs as they were written, I can’t imagine any of this material having the same impact as their most iconic material. Another okay effort best reserved for the diehards.
