Stooge Album #6 for the Texas trio is pretty familiar territory for them, but something is not quite the same.

Ear Candy contains some of the most sorrowful songs on a King’s X album. This is rather fitting considering this is the last studio album King’s X released on major label Atlantic Records. After years of critical acclaim, they failed to truly catch on with the mainstream, thus Ear Candy represents the end of an era for the band. There are some uplifting moments in places, but it sets an overall darker tone than their previous albums. There also aren’t many songs that are heavy in terms of the riffing. This may scare away some metal fans out there.

In spite of these changes, I enjoy a number of songs on the album. The problem for me is that most of them fall in the first half of the album. “The Train”, “(Thinking and Wondering) What I’m Gonna Do”, “Sometime”, “A Box”, “Looking for Love”, and “Mississippi Moon” is about as strong as any start to one of their albums. However, past the first six tracks only “Lies In The Sand (The Ballad of…)” stands out from the pack. I wouldn’t go as far as to call the rest of the album filler, but some of the other songs fail to catch on like other King’s X songs do without effort.

A pretty good release by King’s X, but it’s not as consistently entertaining as the 5 albums that precede it.

Nightfly Ear Candy is the sixth album from King's X. It's pretty much business as usual continuing in the same vein of melodic heavy rock, sometimes metal as their 5 previous albums, the only difference being a slight drop in the overall quality of the songs.

There's still much to enjoy here though; opener The Train and Sometime are both classic King's X with their instantly recognisable style of melodic heavy riffing, soulful vocals and Beatles influenced harmonies. A Box and Lies in the Sand is the band in more laid back style, Ty Tabors chiming guitar arpeggios to the fore in a similar vein to Goldilox and Summerland from their first 2 albums respectively. Looking for Love and Run are both hard hitting powerful rockers and Mississippi Moon with Tabor taking lead vocals is another strong melodic piece. Picture is a late album highlight with it's quiet verse/heavy chorus, a style used a lot by the band over the years and an extended psychedelic instrumental section making it the longest track at 5.34 minutes; yes most of these songs are short and to the point. Life Going By is a fine album closer, Tabor taking lead vocals again on this mid paced powerful melodic piece with some excellent harmony singing.

Ear Candy is a very good King's X album, though overall not quite matching previous albums, but a handful of tracks can stand shoulder to shoulder with, if not quite their best, then the majority of material before. It's also a far superior album to what was to come over the next few releases. 3.5 stars.