Fu Manchu

A very strong album from a band one might have expected to have run out of gas shortly after their top-selling album, Action Is Go. On King of the Road, Fu Manchu prove that they aren't going to disappear into the pot smoke any time soon. The big fat riff of the title track alone proves it.

Like Queens of the Stone Age -- the artistic kings of the Southern California "desert rock"
subgenre -- Fu Manchu concentrate on straight-ahead, heavy stoner rock. But where the
Queens prefer slippery indirection, Fu Manchu favor good-time rhythms and in-your-face
hooks. For their fifth album, they have crafted a noisy suite about cars. They start with
"Hell on Wheels," where frontman Scott Hill contends that "Hell on wheels/Is no... More >