Black Moon Spell by King Tuff (review)

Back in 2014 I wrote about a dozen album reviews for a website called Buzz&Howl, which was subsequently hacked and disappeared into the ether. This is the first in a series of posts intended to preserve that work, unedited. 

King Tuff, Black Moon Spell

“King Tuff is my name/I got madness in my brain/Pleased to meetcha/I’m gonna eatcha--cuz I’m batshit insane.” This charming introduction comes halfway through Black Moon Spell, but by all rights it should have been put right up front, because the track (“Madness”) encapsulates both themes running like twin engines through the record. One is the tongue-in-cheek embrace of craziness/darkness; the other is a depiction of a special sort of punk rock love. This song, like many of the others on the record, is a love song from one young nutso to another. The bridge spells it out like this: “I always fall for the rock&roll’a, Coca-Cola, make me wanna lose control-a girls.” And the chorus furthers the theme: “Now I want you to see, all the madness in me/So open your eyes, and show me all your madness tonight.”

On his latest record--Black Moon Spell is his third-ish studio album--King Tuff has perfected a mode I’ll call tough-guy-gets-sweet. The guitars rarely stop wailing, but the vocals are all sung, never screamed, and only occasionally approaching a shout. There are real emotions being played with here, but it is almost always playful. The weirdly sugary delivery of “dark” lyrics is the norm. Take “Headbanger,” with the lines: “Running free in ecstasy in chains and leather jackets/shaking off our clothes on the grave where rock & roll was buried/makin’ out you make me shout in the back of the cemetery.” This is an artist that believes in the primordial elements of a kick-ass rock & roll song and is willing to construct track after track filled to the brim with simple, and simply hooky, parts.

Occasionally the lyrics veer too far into novelty-song territory, missing the target of that special tough-but-sweet, playful and nostalgic aesthetic area King Tuff carves out throughout the rest of the record and ending up, well, kinda lame. I could do without, for instance, “Black Holes in Stereo,” with lines like, “Girls and boys come from outer space and so does music, too.” But if you don’t have a soft spot for at least a little bit of this kinda stuff, King Tuff just ain’t for you. I’m guessing each listener will have their own skippables among the more lightweight songs, and that not everyone will be as into “I Love You Ugly” as I am--it is, after all, a one minute lo-fi scraper climaxing with the lines “you’re the opposite of cute/you look like shit and I’m telling you the truth/and that’s exactly why I wanna say that I love you.”

Black Moon Spell paints a picture of happy little punks in love--in love with rock & roll, in love with living, and in love with each other. It climaxes with a character portrait of a loveable loser called “Eddie’s Song,” upping the ante on the wistfulness introduced in later album tracks “Eyes of the Muse” and “Staircase of Diamonds.” It’s the type of song you want to keep playing over and over, sometimes dancing around the room, sometimes crying your eyes out, and always singing along to the chorus at the top of your lungs: “Forever young/But forever’s not very long/So I just keep on singing Eddie’s Song.” May rock & roll this simple, this endearing, and this special always continue to be made.