Pissed Jeans - King of Jeans (2009) [Sub Pop] // Grade: B+

As much as I enjoyed Pissed Jeans previous albums, there was always this nagging feeling that something was missing… some potential left unfulfilled. It wasn’t until I got through King of Jeans and subsequently played it again and again that it hit what the missing ingredient was.

Pissed Jeans play the role of sloshed Hardcore party monster ridiculously well. Limbs and strings flailing akimbo, they’re chaotic while thanks to Matt Korvette’s lyrics still meaningful. And as instantly intoxicating as their frenetic rush may be, that nagging thing I couldn’t ever put my finger on before is that they had a tendency to wane a little too long into the dissonance. Unnecessarily elongating and unraveling what up until then been meaty and bombastic attacks.

And while that may have been the case on Hope for Men, it isn’t with King of Jeans. Like all good Jedi’s eventually master, Pissed jeans have finally learned control without neutering or caging that monster within we all fell in love with.

Matt Korvette still sounds wasted in the studio, sharp and apathetic as ever in his sneers at life’s minutia. While Brandon Fry leads the band in a much more calculated assault than ever before, the result is a not only a better bridge between the Post-Hardcore of Jesus Lizard and grunge of Mudhoney, but their best album to date.

- My Pal the Crook