BUCKETHEAD — Pike 245 - Space Viking (review)

BUCKETHEAD — Pike 245 - Space Viking album cover

Album · 2017 · Non-Metal

1/5 · 2017-01-16
siLLy puPPy

BUCKETHEAD (as Bucketheadland) / Pike 245 - Space Viking / 2nd release of 2017 / All instrumental / Contains 3 tracks / Clocks in at 30minutes 30seconds / everything played by Buck-buck-buckethead

“Space Viking (To Bernie Worrell, the greatest music maker of all) (21:29) swallows up 2 thirds of the PIKE’s real estate and is one of the many ambient lullaby tracks. Ugh! My least favorite kind and at this time length i predict a serious snoozer-ama. It begins with a clean guitar melody and ambient backings. A bass is used sparingly and percussion is limited to cymbal action. As i suspected. This is nice mellow background music for surfing the web but totally boring otherwise. Nice production and would sound brilliant if he hadn’t done this type of album a million times before but the problem is that it is repetitive and has no musical composition taking place. It is simply a loop of a simple riff that repeats to infinity. Really? How many times can BH repeat this same booooooooring type of track? Mellow is fine and dandy but what if Barry Manilow only wrote “Mandy” and changed it around slightly for 100 times? In fact i’d rather listen to Manilow over this sterilized crap any day. The worst of the worst. Total sewage sludge on smear nursing home toilets. I’d rather watch paint dry than listen to this one more time

“Litten Well (3:20) picks up the speed and has a more percussion oriented groove with the clean guitar echoed more and sounds more akin to a folk rock track from Kansas or some other 70s prog folk entity. After the last dud any change is welcome of course but this pretty much takes the same timbres and tones and makes an interesting musical creation without wearing out its welcome. Perfect sounds, perfect composition and perfect time length for ideas presented. See BH? It’s not the hard. Spare us of the long winded crap like track one and make decent albums where EVERY track is worthy of investing our limited life span for a listen

“Ever” (5:41) starts out sounding more rock oriented with echoey more distorted guitar and bass and drums. It picks up speed right away and then has a heavier drum and more distorted guitar but it stays in mid tempo range and reverts to slow. This type has been done to death as well since it has been featured on many a PIKE.

After a promising first PIKE of 2017, i’m immediately hit by a total dud. The second track is moderately interesting but nothing to warrant a special effort to hear this one. As far as i’m concerned this PIKE is total filler in a sea of releases that contain many traces of greatness. Is the point of these crap albums to create a contrast for a higher appreciation of the excellent ones? Hmmm…. maybe the chicken lover isn’t so stupid but i’m not a believer that crap needs to fill the cracks between releases that are worthy of entering my ear canals. Overall i’m thoroughly bored by this rotting piece of excrement