Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).
Evil Eye (1997)
Sometimes you just have to kick some ass. There are certain songs that will get you pumped up to partake in such activity, and for me, Fu Manchu's "Evil Eye" is one of them.
To understand Fu Manchu, who are certainly not a popular band, you need to understand the genre of stoner rock. It's basically slowed down, sludgy metal, but different bands have brought different elements to it over the years.
The early touchstones of the style include Black Sabbath (especially the Master of Reality album), Blue Cheer, Blue Oyster Cult and Hawkwind, but stoner rock didn't really become a thing until the early '90s when a bunch of southern California bands emerged. Kyuss was playing parties in Palm Desert using gas generators to power their equipment. Sleep was a doom metal act out of San Jose. On the East Coast, Monster Magnet went for a more psychedelic sound. And then there was Fu Manchu.
Based in Orange County, California, Fu Manchu formed in 1985 as a hardcore punk band called Virulence with singer Ken Pucci, guitarist Scott Hill, bassist Mark Abshire and drummer Ruben Romano. Pucci left in 1990 and the band changed its name to Fu Manchu. A replacement singer came and went and eventually, Hill took over as lead vocalist and the band's sound evolved into a slower, heavier riff-driven rumble. The band underwent a few lineup changes before releasing its first album, 1994's No One Rides for Free. The next year, Fu Manchu released Daredevil and toured across the country opening for Monster Magnet.
After the band released its third album, 1996's In Search of..., Romano and lead guitarist Eddie Glass left the band and were replaced by Brant Bjork (former drummer of Kyuss) and Bob Balch (Glass and Romano teamed up with former Fu bassist Abshire to form Nebula, another excellent stoner rock act). Fu Manchu's fourth album, The Action is Go, really cemented the band as a stoner rock titan. It's all bone-rattling riffs, squealing solos and pounding rhythms powering songs about muscle cars, aliens and space. It's not about deep thoughts, it's about rocking the hell out.
"Evil Eye" is the lead track on The Action is Go and it's a mission statement in kickassery. Starting with a guitar squeal, it launches into a monstrous riff. The band combines the energy of punk with the sheer power of metal and just pummels it into your brain. It's excellent driving music, as you can imagine. "Evil Eye" got a boost a few years later when it was included on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 game, which makes total sense since the cover of The Action is Go is a great photo of a 1970s-era skateboarder grinding in an empty swimming pool.
Fu Manchu definitely gives off '70s stoner vibes, like those older dudes who used to drive boogie vans that had Frank Frazetta paintings on the outside and wall-to-wall shag carpeting on the interior (as well as plenty of weed smoke). I didn't learn about the band until a few years later when I was working at Webnoize and I got a cassingle from Fu Manchu's upcoming album, King of the Road. It was all fat and fuzzy and got me to investigate further and discover "Evil Eye" (which featured a video based on the 1979 Matt Dillon movie Over the Edge). A few of us then saw the band play at South by Southwest in 2000 as King of the Road became even bigger for the band; this is all relative because it didn't chart or anything, but their videos were getting played on MTV and they were drawing bigger crowds.
The band is still going strong, with enough of a cult following to fill clubs. I've seen them a few times over the years and they always kick the requisite amount of posterior. They fill a much-needed niche, for me, anyway.
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