siLLy puPPy Despite including BUCKETHEAD on almost all VIGGO MORTENSEN’s solo albums, for some reason there are only two which give equal billing on the album cover thus officially casting the albums as a full-fledged collaboration. The first was VIGGO’s fith release, the 2003 release “Pandemoniumforamerica” and the second was his seventh INTELLIGENCE FAILURE which once again makes a reprise into the world political criticism of failed US policies around the world. Once again this is one of those avant-garde ambient affairs that includes speeches by George Bush, Dick Cheney, C. Ray Nagin, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Cindy Sheehan and Howard Zinn accompanied by sound effects, keyboard swooshiness and other contributions by MORTENSEN’s family members as well as Travis Dickerson, our chicken loving guitar hero and we can’t forget Brigit!

What we basically get here is a collage effect that weaves together political speeches, political critique, patriotic musical segments, ambient effects, sound effects such as sirens, soldiers marching etc. all for the purpose of creating a musical counter statement to the criminal behaviors of the US war machine regarding the invasion of Iraq in 2003. There is a fair amount of emphasis on cheesy piano runs and other emotional tugs are designed to pull heartstrings and everything is kept in mellow yellow mode. BUCKETHEAD contributes clean guitars with some really out there reverb moments but really there is really very little on here that is remotely interesting musically speaking and the LAST thing i want to hear when i put on an album is commentary by some of the most heinous political elites ever to walk this planet. It’s bad enough to hear these things on the news.

I can understand the emotional reaction of the day and the desire to protest in a more effective way than with picket signs but unfortunately i think the FAILURE part of the title in this one is fairly self-prophetic as it is rather ineffective in keeping my interest in any possible way and THAT’s coming from one of the most open-minded music lovers you could ever read a review from. While this one may have been ignited with a passion to protest, it serious lacks the inspiration to pull it off with any conviction and besides ONE of these types of albums was more than enough. If you must check one of these out only, the previous album with both BH & VIGGO in the title “Pandemoniumforamerica” was more interesting but even that one i doubt i’ll ever revisit again.