Fishbone [ tickets ] and King's X [ tickets ]--two outfits that have spent most of their careers on the fringe of the alt-rock scene--join forces for a May outing.

Each act is also scheduled to play a handful of its own headlining dates in May. Details appear below.

Both groups are backing new albums. King's X is set to release "Black Like Sunday" on May 20, while Fishbone offered up the hits collection "The Essential Fishbone" on April 1.

"Black Like Sunday" features 14 newly recorded versions of previously unreleased tracks that King's X originally wrote years ago.

"These songs are from our first seven years as a band, and most are from between 1980 and 1983," singer/guitarist Ty Tabor said in a statement. "We've written hundreds of songs over the years and as we kept writing new ones others got left behind."

Tabor went on to say that, despite their age, the tracks that the group recorded for "Black Like Sunday" were scarcely altered from their original versions.

"The songs have not changed very much. The first day or two that we went through our old tapes of these songs we realized the original ideas are better than we thought they were."

Fishbone's "The Essential Fishbone" features tracks dating back to the group's '80s-era infancy. Songs include "Party at Ground Zero" and "Skankin' to the Beat."

A complete track listing for "The Essential Fishbone," as well as streaming samples of all of the album's cuts, is posted at Legacy Recordings' website.