King Kong Groover
| King Kong Groover | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Babylon Zoo | ||||
| Released | 26 February 1999 | |||
| Genre | Alternative rock, glam rock | |||
| Label | EMI | |||
| Producer | Jas Mann | |||
| Babylon Zoo chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| New Musical Express |  |
| Scotland on Sunday | |
King Kong Groover is the second album by Babylon Zoo, released on 26 February 1999. The singles from the album were "All the Money's Gone", which peaked at #46 on the UK Singles Chart, and a cover of Mott the Hoople's "Honaloochie Boogie", which was issued as a promotional single in France (plans for an international release were abandoned).
The song "Chrome Invader" was originally called "Silver Surfer" but had to be changed for copyright reasons. The Japanese version of the album includes two bonus tracks - an acoustic cover of T.Rex's "Cosmic Dancer" and a remix of "The Boy with the X-Ray Eyes".
King Kong Groover met with negative reviews. A New Musical Express journalist awarded the album one out of ten, calling it a "slickly produced machiavellian plundering of pop classics" and a "clumsy effort to resurrect a career that was a fluke in the first place."Scotland on Sunday reviewer Colin Somerville accused the band of plagiarising The Beatles' "Across the Universe" on "Bikini Machine", and wrote: "Sadly lacking in anything even remotely approaching originality, King Kong Groover is the sound of a career spinning into terminal decline."
Deviating from critical consensus in a retrospective review, Dave Thompson of AllMusic said that while there is "nothing in sight to even approach the peaks that their debut hit 'Spaceman' attained", the album has "yearning majesty" and "neo-operatic flair".
An "abject failure",King Kong Groover sold less than 10,000 copies and did not chart.
(All songs written by Jas Mann unless otherwise noted.)
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