BUCKETHEAD — Pike 61 - Citacis (review)

BUCKETHEAD — Pike 61 - Citacis album cover

Album · 2014 · Avant-garde Metal

3.5/5 · 2016-09-13
siLLy puPPy

BUCKETHEAD - PIKE 61 - CITACIS 20th album out of 60 in 2014 and 91st overall All sounds brought to you by Buckethead and all instrumental This one has only 9 track that clock in at 29:10 All tracks are titled “Citacis” followed by numbers 72 thru 80 The tracks pretty much run into each other

“Citacis 72” (3:17) starts out with a deep bass and some strange sliding guitar sounds. It quickly becomes sort of dark ambient with strange sounds swirling around and then it breaks into metal riffage. It has little pauses with ambient sounds then turns into crunchy heavy metal again. During another pause it has strange guitar sounds and then turns to funk. This is another one of those roller coaster ride PIKEs! Unlike, say “Ydrapoej” which was all over the place with no song structures whatsoever, this one has basic melodic developments even though the genres change up quite a bit and there are strange unrelated breaks. However, this is quite the weird one with heavy metal and funk battling it out with electronic embellishments inserted wherever unexpectedly. The time sigs do change up quite a bit as well but they usually only change when the genres change

“Citacis 73” (3:05) pretty much follows suit with metal, funk and electronica. It seems to get even more frenetic at times but the alternation between all the weirdness along with time sig weirdness and non-melodic moments continues

“Citacis 74” (2:59) ditto only this one includes some guitar solo madness

“Citacis 75” (3:01) is a little different. It has a bouncy rhythm at first with a cute little guitar lick and then it becomes totally dissonant doom metal with sustain and then a bizarre electronic funk sound and on and on and on

“Citacis 76” (3:45) ditto only ratcheting up the tension a bit with even weirder offerings

“Citacis 77” (4:33) ditto only with some nice volume dynamic additions

“Citacis 78” (1:46) starts out with chipmunk chewing electronica and then becomes a weirdly timed hard rock piece before turning into slow funk and then dungeon rock etc

“Citacis 79” (2:00) diverse madness as usual but has nice chime bell additions

“Citacis 80” (4:39) starts out with very slow clean guitar making a melody that sounds warped. This one is unusual for the PIKE since it’s the only track that stays the same melody and style for its entire run. It remains slow paced and rather atmospheric and murky. Guitar is echoey and there is electronic ambience in the background. It picks up speed towards the end. Pretty cool

I honestly don’t know why some of these highly experimental all-over-the-map type albums work and some don’t. I do like this one but it seems more hodge-podgy than others of its ilk. I guess it doesn’t quite go far enough for what it is and isn’t cohesive enough in any particular genre to be compelling either. However, if you love the wild and unpredictable PIKEs that are truly uncompromising and offer the stitched together Frankenstein effect then this one is a pretty cool avant-garde metal listen. Just not my top pick of the pile

more than 2 years ago
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siLLy puPPy wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Thanks, Warthur! I guess i'm a glutton for both reward and punishment. Great to see ya back on the review sites :)

Warthur wrote:

more than 2 years ago

God bless you for tackling the Buckethead Pike-pile, siLLy puPPy, I swear the dude cranks these things out faster than any human could possibly listen to them.