BUCKETHEAD — Pike 88 - Red Pepper Restaurant (review)

BUCKETHEAD — Pike 88 - Red Pepper Restaurant album cover

Album · 2014 · Avant-garde Metal

4/5 · 2016-11-18
siLLy puPPy

BUCKETHEAD - PIKE 88 - Red Pepper Restaurant 47th album out of 60 in 2014 and 117th overall All sounds brought to you by Buckethead and all instrumental This has 4 tracks that clock in at 33:21

“Level 1” (8:49) begins with a freaky funky guitar and followed by grungy, echoey and highly distorted even dissonant chords. The guitar hops along as staccato chops a lot of the time with a slight jazz / funk flair. After a couple of minutes BH unleashes some killer guitar solo performances on top of it all. There is also some electronic effects that sweep in and out of the scene. The beat is somewhere between mid to fast temp and there are progressive time sig chops that come and go while the instruments weave around each other in strange ways. There is a pronounced sub bass foundation at times that adds a rumble to the mix. The funky aspects dominate at times as well. This is a fairly consistent yet unpredictable track. The general flow doesn’t change too much but the elements that accompany the basic rhythmic flow are quite unorthodox and impossible to predict. Pretty cool track

“Level 2” (8:42) ushers in a totally different feel and sound. This starts with a straight forward alternative metal type riff sequence that begins to alternate with electronica induced freakiness. The drums lazily accompany the production as the guitar riff is quite energetic. The bass is lazy like the drums. There is a progressive feel as the time sigs sway to the left and to the right but are like a sine wave on one of those scientific graphs that drive students crazy. The guitars are quite heavy and pick up steam as the track continues as do the drums and bass. It has a very avant-funk vibe to it and is quite unique actually. Guitar licks appear here and there. This one has an overall feel that reminds me of the “Monsters And Robots” album which is perhaps my favorite album by BH only this is much more bizarre and progressive and allowed to fly the freak flag full staff

“Level 3” (8:04) begins totally funky. Well sorta. It has a jittery guitar part that has a bass that only punctuates certain spots and then jumps into a more guitar chord frenzied type of jazzy funk fusion energy session with the same type of time sig feel as the rest of the album. It’s rather regular yet slightly off. There are different extraneous sound effects that contribute irregular appearances. While the timing seems to be somewhat of a 4/4 time sig most of all it is very syncopated in many ways but yet have little time sig freak outs that give a jittery feel to it all. The guitar leads that occasionally jump in are electric and only serve to intensify certain sections. Another pretty cool track

“Level 4” (7:43) begins very calm and mellow with an atmospheric synth laden background and a clean guitar bringing forth a slow and placid clean riff at a very subdued tempo. This is one of those slow and predictable tunes that usually envelop an entire album’s worth of ennui but in this case BH tacked it onto the end of a much more interesting PIKE. Actually this is the proper way to unleash these normalities. Personally i still find these types of tracks that have a very slow melodic development with clean guitars, slow bass and drums to be a tad underwhelming but at least presented as a single track can be digestible especially after a highly complex and wild ride that this PIKE is. I still would have preferred a more adventurous track as i haven’t had enough.This PIKE is pretty cool except the last track which is very average.