A few days ago, I had the honor of seeing King’s X open up for Porcupine Tree on tour. It was my first time seeing both bands live, and I seemed one of the only people among the crowd who was excited for King’s X. Needless to say, they rocked the house and made converts out of the audience. I decided I was going to go and review any album that had not been reviewed already, and luckily their debut, Out of the Silent Planet, was available.

The album title comes from the CS Lewis novel of the same name, as both guitarist Ty Tabor and drummer Jerry Gaskill are fans of the author. However, there are no parallels to the book otherwise, as the lyrics deal more with spirituality than science fiction. Opener In the New Age starts off with some ambient effects before a driving guitar groove comes in a few minutes in. Bassist/vocalist Dug Pinnick delivers a really bluesy, soulful performance on this song, and on the entire album. His standout performance on Out of the Silent Planet comes on the song Goldilox, which has always been the song I associate with King’s X. Goldilox features a very simple guitar riff backing an amazingly beautiful melody with some really uplifting vocal harmonies thanks to the other two members. Dug’s voice would get deeper as the band’s music got darker and more sophisticated. On this record, he very much sounds like the singer of a hard rock band that belongs in the 80s.

Power of Love is up next and it takes a while to get rolling, but once it does, the groove just makes you want to give yourself to the church of King’s X. After this, the songs get a little too monotonous. Wonder has the same rhythmic pattern as the first three songs and isn’t as captivating, while Sometimes starts off with a rather promising guitar riff but descends into the typical hard rock verse. I’ll admit that the chorus is killer though—one of the best on the album. Other highlights include King with its awesome Beatles-esque harmonies and What Is This with its ultra-eerie guitar effects during the verse.

All in all, Out of the Silent Planet definitely sounds like a debut album. It shows the band’s potential, but is not as solid as their future material would be.