siLLy puPPy PIKE 138 - GIANT CLAW is the 37th album released by BUCKETHEAD in 2015. Like all the PIKES this one is all instrumental with BUCKETHEAD covering all musical duties solo. This one clocks in at exactly 30 minutes and has 10 tracks. This one is weird (imagination that) and the first nine track are 1.Giant 2.Claw 3.From 4.The 5.Cen 6.ter 7.Of 8.The 9.Earth plus the tenth track titled “Giant Claw Returns To The Center Of the Earth.”

This is another one of those where all the tracks basically run into each other. GIANT CLAW starts out with an fading in fast guitar lead and then breaks into a blistering hard and heavy riff that plays at the speak of light. Very thrashy like early Metallica on methamphetamines (C10H15N). There is an industrial metal feel to it as well as there is lots of stop / start blink of an eye type of chords chops and strange squealing single note guitar leads that add a weird ambience to the whole thing. The production and time sigs work hand in hand to create a surreal sonic world that isn’t out of step with the equally surreal visuals of the album cover.

Despite the weird tweaking of the sound and production, the underlying musical development is indubitably that of the BUCKETHEAD PIKE series with that instrumental jamming that more often than not repeats, but this one has enough craziness to keep my attention. The chords are slightly off, the leads are slightly off, everything is just slightly off as if i’m under the influence of something (no, it’s not that, it really is the music!)

The lat track “Giant Claw Returns To The Center Of The Earth” is the first time that that relentless thrashing speed ends. This starts out with a nice slow reverb guitar riff that develops just a bit of distortion. It starts with a slower tempo and slower ratchets up the speed incorporating solos. This one seems like it’s from a different album actually, one of those “Colma” re-visits that i usually find quite boring. This one does sound a bit better than those by not by much but by using just one track of this instead of a whole album works much better.

For the most part this is some manic really really fast thrashy, grungy and progressive sheet mixed all together. I actually like this one. It incorporates the aspects of all those PIKES i found extremely boring and tweaks all the elements in different directions to make it sound totally unique. I wouldn’t call this OMG great stuff, but it does fulfill my headbanging needs, my desire for something out of the ordinary and incorporates all kinds of alternative, thrash, doom and sludge metal tricks to prove its point. It also has occasional electronic effects that hit the spot at the right moment. I would say that the way this is all tied together is definitely progressive. Another favorite from this long list of mostly duds that has emerged this year.