siLLy puPPy PIKE 171 - A GHOST TOOK MY HOMEWORK is the 70th album released by BUCKETHEAD in 2015. Another PIKE that sees BUCKETHEAD playing all the instruments and production duties. Another PIKE that clocks in near a half hour at 29:53 and yet another PIKE where every track is entirely instrumental. This one has three tracks with the title track hogging up nearly 1/3 of the album.

The title tracks starts things out and at 18:20 swallows up a lot of the album but unlike the last annoying PIKE that was slow and fluffy, this one aggressively enters the room with highly distorted and crunchy metal guitars and semi-progressive time signatures that alternate between bassy riff and those higher up on the strings. It kinda has elements of thrash metal, industrial metal, progressive metal and good old alternative metal BUCKETHEAD style. Every once in a while there are some electronica breakdowns that are a bit freaky but it always goes back to a hard, heavy and speedy metal riff sometimes with echoey effects and sometimes just classic crunchy distortion. As the track commences on its merry way down its lengthy duration it add more electronic noises that sometimes simply embellish the main riff and at times go on freaky little tangents that crossover into IDM or something. All in all despite the length this one remains fairly consistent in mixing up things just enough to keep my interest. So many lines blurred here between metal and electronica that it’s like one of those dreams where you don’t know if you’re awake or sleeping. This one works for me.

Track two “A Man Visits Museum” at 9:21 and starts out similar to the first track with a heavy aggressive and sped up guitar riff that’s more in the industrial metal camp because of its staccato mixed with the electronic drums. The bass has a deep beefy sound and a solo erupts after a couple minutes and electronica flitters about unpredictably and then another solo. This track is just a loose wire flapping around sending sparks and energetic outbursts every which way. The electronic outburst are particularly wild. This is quirky and i like it.

Track three “Birds And Ladders” at 2:12 and is a short little number in the scheme of things. This one is really groovy and metallic so i guess this could qualify as groove metal. It is crunchy, slightly funky but the groove is strong, however the drums are bit cheesy and don’t serve this track well. It is short and to the point and even though it’s the least impressive on this one it’s not without its charm save the drumming mediocrity.

I like this PIKE but don’t love it. There are really no bad moments on this one but it also doesn’t have any particular moment where i’m blown away. In the end it is a great listen and one that i would want to hear again so i would say a 3.5 is warranted.