siLLy puPPy PIKE 210 - SUNKEN PARLOR is the 109th album by BUCKETHEAD in 2015. Another all instrumental album performed exclusively by BUCKETHEAD. This one approaches the half hour mark clocking in at 28:49 and has only two tracks that are quite distinct and do not run together like almost all of the recent PIKES before. This is also a return to a heavier rock format leaving behind the dark ambient and slow churning rockers in recent releases.

“Wall Slide” (21:16) takes up 2/3 of the album and starts out as a heavy rocker with crunchy distorted guitars, bass and heavy drumming. It runs the course of a traditional heavy metal track as it has a nice guitar riff, some elements of thrash but mostly comes off as a hard rocker never getting too heavy for me to consider modern metal. There are breakdowns where the riffs are less distorted and have that famous echo effect that BUCKETHEAD pulls off so well. While there are slight touches of progressive tendencies in the timings at times, this is for the most part a straight forward instrumental hard rocker that seems fairly predictable and certainly nothing that BH hasn’t done to death at this point so i find this thing fairly long and dreadfully devoid of any originality whatsoever however well played it may be. It also lacks any serious soloing of any interest other than a bluesy that starts off scarcely but becomes a continuous flow by the end of the track. All is played well but the monotony of the whole means it wears out its welcome quickly. Meh. Next

“Sunken Parlor” (7:33) starts off a little heavier than the first track. It has a more aggressive drive with fast and furious guitar riffs with solos that find their way into the mix immediately and more often. After the song develops there’s even a little funk break but it quickly reverts back to the hard rocking metal. It is more varied than the previous sprawling track but this is also a type of track that has been done quite extensively in the 2015 PIKE releases and i’m not finding it particularly stimulating despite being well played. It is the standard BUCKETHEAD affair of fast riffs mixed with scorching solos and all but the song structure is by-the-numbers and i’m just not feeling it. The harder and faster he plays as the tempo ratchets up just feels recycled in so many ways. If you can’t get enough of these heavy rockers and don’t care too much about originality than you might like this more than me since it is an excellent track but i’m just feeling enough is enough with all this repackaged stuff and am only finding the totally original PIKES to be worth the time.