BUCKETHEAD — Pike 316 - Angel Wings (review)

BUCKETHEAD — Pike 316 - Angel Wings album cover

Album · 2022 · Avant-garde Metal

3.5/5 · 2022-06-19
siLLy puPPy

PIKE 316 - ANGEL WINGS 14th installment of 2022 Everything played by BUCKETHEAD Total playing time 26 minutes and 59 seconds All instrumental as always!

After a sleepy time PIKE, ole BUCKY is feeling frisky again and turns up the metal madness on his latest PIKE 316 - ANGEL WINGS which features five single letter tracks that collectively spell WINGS. Oh how friggin clever is that ;) This is one of those jittery bouncy and eclectic PIKEs where BH pulls out all the virtuoso punches with crazy fast tempos, scorching guitar solos and proggy time signatures run amok. Add a touch of madness and we’re in business.

“W” is an electric guitar wankfest with heavy chord stomps, riffing on steroids and all kinds of tricks and trinkets that has BH breaking the fretboard. This track has some standard metal riffs but also jumps around all over the place with lots of weird guitar antics. This is avant-freakery run amok!

“I” imperceptibly emerges from the first track as there really is no distinction between tracks other than to make a silly slogan. This pretty much continues the aggressive freak show only with some more subdued alternative metal moments. The soloing has been tamed down and some more down time but then the musical motifs change unexpectedly with some off-kilter time signature freak outs and then a new metal march and then the soloing erupts.

“N” likewise is just an extension of the last track with various guitar riffs in full metal rage that plays for a while and then suddenly turns into another aggressive style. This one has some guitar soloing so out of control that BH stumbles all over himself. Ha! This one actually slows things down with a beautiful power ballad melody with atmospheric backdrop. A real song emerges only to be brutally assaulted by a bizarre avant-soloing workout and then back to a bluesy guitar riff and then things just speed up and change more often. Ends in a finger breaking face melter!

“G” continues with a bluesy guitar riff and slows things down to 70s hard rock speed. This is also the longest track at 8 minutes but things still shuffle like a radio being tuned to different stations however it’s all connected at least in feel. It’s amazing how BH is getting some fairly weird sounds out of his guitar and once he bursts into a fiery avant-freak zone he really lets loose. Bet he broke some strings on this one. I’m not sure if BH really plays the bass and drums but if he does he has gotten much better. These instruments have improved remarkably in the last year. Basically the track just skips around with different ideas for a few cadences and then moves on.

“S” is the first track that actually starts dramatically different with a calm weird clean guitar part ushering in another monstrous metal riff but then the track quickly follows suit and changes every few cadences with some free improvisation parts, some structured, some just friggin nuts and some just plain brutal.

All in all a surprise that BH unleashed another avant-garde juggernaut after a boring lullaby album. These are truly my favorite kinds of albums by BH but at the same time this has been done before and much better. While most will probably hate this scatterbrained schizoid attempt of making a musical quilt of ideas, i rather like this however as i stated, it’s nothing new. There have been many PIKEs of this ilk however BH succeeds in some wickedly wild guitar tricks i’ve never heard before. All in all a very good PIKE if not the best of this style.