siLLy puPPy
PIKE 110 - WALL TO WALL COBWEBS is the 10th album released by BUCKETHEAD in 2015. After the fluffy, soft and safe recycled crap on “Pike 109 - The Left Panel” it’s a major relief to hear BUCKETHEAD rockin’ the house on this one. This album just clocks in over the half hour mark at 32:03 and contains three instrumental tracks.
The first track is the heavy rockin’ “Runaway Carriage” which at 6:16 is the shortest and heaviest track which begins with heavy distorted metal riffing and BUCKETHEAD’s signature virutoso guitar solos wailing up and down the scales with hammer-on fury. After listening to a lot of these PIKES it is clear that many of these tracks wear out their welcome but this seems to be the proper length for this type of instrumental guitar jam.
The second track “The Miracle Molecule” is another heavy alternative rocker with a crunchy riff accompanied by down-tuned grungy guitar soloing with slight echo effects. It is very has a few varying riffing parts and is actually not too bad but at 10:30 does wear out its welcome a tad.
The finale is the title track and at 15:17 is the longest piece, which has a slightly slower tempo, less distortion and a slight funkiness to the intro. It becomes a more or less standard mid-tempo guitar jam with emphasis on the echo effect.There are some nice variations as the heavier riffing trades off with the echoey riffing but like most of these long pieces could be trimmed down a bit.
Overall this one is actually decent to listen to. My only complaint is pretty much the length of two of the tracks but at least they have some variety to keep it from getting to monotonous.