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Out of the Silent Planet, the debut album from King's X, was released early in 1988. The band's discography to date (apart from solo projects) includes eleven studio releases, a Best of CD and one live album. That's nearly eighteen years of history.

In that time record deals are won and lost, show attendance and album sales go up and down. There are shiny, happy moments in the sun as well as seasons of gray obscurity. Through it all, Doug, Ty,  and Jerry keep writing, recording and touring--pounding out some imaginative, intelligent, loud, crunchy, tasty bits of progressive rock. Ear candy aplenty.

The first line in VH1's online bio of the band says: "Few hard rock bands are as widely respected yet criminally overlooked as King's X."

And so it continues to go.

King's X has its small but mighty devoted fan base. True mainstream success, however, has seemed to elude them despite all the wonderful music they have poured into this less-silent planet.

Enough mourning over the unfairness of it all. Let's catapult to November 2005 and one of those shiny, happy moments.

It is Friday night, November 18th, at Martyr's in Chicago. The small bar is filled to capacity and the audience is getting what it paid for.

Gut-rumbling bass pours out of Doug's instrument and his singing is an emotional extension of what is inside: the turmoil, the hope, the anger, the uncertain surrender to faith and its opposite. His sustained signature scream is the exclamation point between thoughts.

Jerry leans back behind the kit and the sticks attack relentlessly: his body is animated with the physical energy only drummers can conjure, every muscle attune and a part of what is being made.

Masterful rhythms, crafted somewhere in the secret places of Ty's musical consciousness, weave their way into dancing, bouncing fingers alive with mad-riffing, sweet-sliding, string-bending, speed-limit-defying lead solos.

Three voices blend, at once organic and practiced, into harmonies--becoming a whole greater than the sum of its parts, creating moments of transport. People are singing along, bodies are rocking and, in these brief segments of time, ordinary life is forgotten.

King's X has their crowd tonight, they own them. The surrender is mutual and it is good.

Obviously infused with fresh excitement by the music on their latest release, Ogre Tones, Doug Pinnick, Ty Tabor and Jerry Gaskill are "on" tonight in every sense of the word.

They are tight, they are tuned in--to each other's nerve-endings, to the crowd's emotional pulse. They're baring their weathered rock and roll souls, they can feel it, and they're having fun.

"If you give me your soul for this song," Doug says, "I promise to give it back."

They launch into "Over My Head." Doug is in it, heart and soul, as he sings:

"Grandma used to sing every night when she was prayin'...over my head.I hear music, oh Lord.I hear it, don't you hear it.listen...it's all around me, it's everywhere."

The audience is in it, too, as the music soars over their heads. They can see Grandma praying and they can feel the impression her love and her spirit made (and still makes) upon a young boy.

Virtually every song off the new album is played but many old favorites are visited as well. "Dogman," "A Box" and "We Were Born to be Loved" among the highlights of earlier X tunes.

Two encores and the deal is closed, the givers and the receivers of the gift equally blessed it would seem.

If the boys in the band ever wonder whether their effort has meaning, they need not worry.

Thanks for the gift, dudes. You rock.

Jim Wormington 11/21/2005