This came out in 2000 — or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Cars, sex and money have long been the holy trinity of rock lyrics.
I don’t know how SoCal stoner-rockers Fu Manchu are doing in the love game — but since I doubt they have a whole lot of cash, you can probably assume it’s not that great. That leaves them with one thing they are truly qualified to sing about: Their wheels. And dude, do they ever make the most of it. Their latest, King Of The Road, is a masterpiece of cowbell-plonking boogie-van metal. After taking a misdirected detour into skate-punk on 1997’s The Action Is Go, singer-guitarist Scott Hill and co. have pulled a U-turn, put the pedal to the metal and sped back to the desert-rat, bong-haze blues-rock of earlier discs such as In Search Of… and Daredevil. That means wah-wah-power-chord guitars that rev and grind like dirt bikes, bass that throbs like a muscle car at a red light, vocals that scratch and howl like vintage Ted Nugent and hot-rodding hesher riffs that split the difference between Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer. In other words, this van’s a-rockin’, dude. Don’t come a-knockin.’
