Push Comes to Shove

When thinking about typical music from the mid 90's there are a few things that come to my mind. You got your Scatman John, Vengaboys and an endless amount of eurodance, on the other side you also got Earth Crisis, Marilyn Manson and Pantera of course. Kong are from this time period and their sound very much reflects this. You'd expect a progressive metal band from that time period to sound like Dream Theater or maybe Mr Bungle. Instead Kong come across more like all sorts of non heavy bands from that time period. Kong achieve this by merging all sorts of different influences into their sound. While they've always been eclectic they push it all to a new level on Push Comes to Shove.

On Push Comes to Shove Kong build upon their already established style of post-rock like, industrial sort of groovy heavy metal by adding a whole bunch of different elements to the recipe. There are moments that take from trance and even eurodance on this record. It is like everything that was on the airwaves back then got put into a blender. The end product is something that feels like it could be the soundtrack for a video game. Maybe it is my nostalgia kicking in but for example the track Bumpe takes me back to Unreal Tournament. This album also sounds very 90s in terms of its production job. The feel of this album is very natural yet loose. Nothing comes over as an overly ambitious try hard experiment. It is basically a very pleasant uniform listen. To me its niche is not to be in your face good but instead you put it on as background music, let your mind wander and just relax. Now that does not mean every track is as good as the other. Not because they are failed pieces of experimentation but your mind just drifts a bit off too much instead. Luckily there are more than enough tracks that reel you back in.

This album walks a fine line, something like this could quite easily have ended up sounding boring or completely off. Yet somehow Kong manage to keep themselves on track and deliver a quite pleasing and unique listening experience.

Originally written for: nonesoviral.blogspot.com