Acid King - Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere

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Oakland, California’s ACID KING latest album “Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere” marks the band’s fourth full-length release. “Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere” is also the band’s only release in the past decade. Their last album, “III,” came out in 2005. And that means that the band’s seminal release “Busse Woods” was released sixteen years before this brand new, all-original material came into light.

Are ACID KING a good “Stoner Metal” band? No, they are a great one. ACID KING is definitely among the giants of the genre like PENTAGRAM, BORIS, CONAN, and so on. What makes ACID KING so good is the beautiful numbness to the sound of every one of their songs. And Lori S. has a soaring voice is that makes itself impossible to ignore. ACID KING, as the name could imply, blasts you off into an odyssey of thick and fuzzy doom riffs and down-tempo groove that echoes bands like THE MELVINS, ELECTRIC WIZARD and SLEEP.

I personally believe its childish to label this music “Stoner Metal” when all it is are simplified pentatonic scale-driven hard rock songs with a herculean amounts of overdrive and bass fuzz layered over them. If a song like “Laser Headlights” is performed on acoustic instruments, is the song still a Stoner Metal song? When you strip away the electricity and the fabricated tone of every instrument (except or the drums), is what you have left a bunch of Stoner songs?

This album didn’t venture out much further than the band has done on their previous records. The songs are pretty solid, catchy and memorable. My favorite tracks off of this are “Silent Pictures”, “Red River” & “Center of Everywhere” but I would still play every track off of “Middle of Nowhere, Center of Everywhere” without skipping anything. I guess if nothing is broken about the music, what’s the use of fixing anything?