siLLy puPPy PIKE 180 - 27 DAYS TIL HALLOWEEN: CAVERN GUIDE is the 79th album released by BUCKETHEAD in 2015 and is the 5th album in the countdown to HALLOWEEN. Another all instrumental album finding BUCKETHEAD performing all sounds on board. This one clocks in just 14 seconds over the half hour mark and contains six tracks all titled CAVERN GUIDE. It is broken up as “Part 1” to “Part 6.”

This is another ambient release and it is one of the most minimal i’ve heard so far. It really evokes the feel of the album cover. It is bleak and barren like a lifeless, dank crevice in the Earth where a helpless life form has fallen to its dismay and lay there to slowly starve and become insane in the process before it perishes and rots.

It sounds indeed like i’m trapped in a deep cavern and there is a bit of an echoey pitch of some electronic sound while something is tapping on a cave wall. This is one of those PIKES where all the tracks run seamlessly together so it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other starts. The hypnotic droning sounds go on and on but occasionally some kind of dissonant string sounds will come out of the abyss and build momentum and then flitter back to obscurity.

At about 10:40 it suddenly erupts into an energetic segment where it sounds like some mad person is pounding on a metal fence or something but then it totally goes back to being mellow and monotonous.

This one is weird and a hard one to swallow. It definitely makes a good horror soundtrack but more like one for the insane. It is creepy but then has bursts of freaky noises like a swarm of hornets flying around your face and then dissipates into the great unknown.

“Part 6” is the most noisy of the bunch. It has different eruptions of sound effects over a swooshy kind of coasting through space feel while sounds flitter out from all reaches of space to suck the life force outa ya. Probably the best part of the album IMHO.

This one is OK but not as effective as some of the other PIKES in the horror ambient genre but this certainly does the job! 3 stars is warranted.