eMusic Review 0
On their third album, Pennsylvania party-foulers Pissed Jeans turned from aggro-slack novelty to a focused, melodic, razor-sharp buzzkill. Their Sub Pop debut, Hope for Men was essentially a comedy record, juxtaposing Flipper-style soul-sucker sludge with deadpan stories of mundane people: fantasy football enthusiasts, scrapbookers, a "people person" who forwards jpegs of funny dogs. But follow-up King Of Jeans has a precise anger, a laser-guided chomp, completely dropping emotionless, gray-hued fog banks in favor of a measured class-of-'89 gnash — think Jesus Lizard's Head, Nirvana's Bleach and early Unsane.
Vocalist Matt Korvette has matured from jerky misanthropist to introspective, self-flagellating wild-man, focusing undiluted anger on his own faults instead of those of others, tearing himself down with a raw-throated yawp. With Henry Rollins's untethered aplomb, Korvette eviscerates his perceived laziness ("False Jesii Part 2"), awkwardness ("Half Idiot") and self-sabotage ("Dominate Yourself"); treating a song about debilitating depression ("Spent") to the same exhausted whine as one about dealing with male-pattern baldness ("Goodbye (Hair)"). While he rants, raves and runs his neuroses through the paper shredder, his band boils over with tightly-bolted sludge-punk fury, perfectly capturing the tension-building exercises of Nirvana with mud-kicking dirt-metal churn of Eyehategod.
