siLLy puPPy B U C K E T H E A D PIKE 227 - ARCADE OF THE DESERTED 8th album by BUCKETHEAD in 2016 (released February 21) Clocks in at 29:32 ALL instrumental EVERYTHING performed for you by Buck-buck-buck-buckethead

Title track (FIVE MINUTES) starts out in jangle arpeggio mode in a slow tempo. It continues at a snail’s pace and adds some licks and chords. Eventually becomes more rocking with drums and distorted guitar but only heats up to mid-tempo before drifting back into a mellow soft passage and then back to rockin’ and back to mellow etc. Not bad actually but not great.

“Swung Vault” (TEN MINUTES FIFTY ONE SECONDS) starts off with an echoed guitar arpeggio and chord playing simultaneously and then suddenly breaks into thrash metal. Nice. Very speedy, very riffy, very thrashy. Cruncholiscious. Pretty straight forward time signatures at first but then changes it up with odd stop / start action. Very cool actually. BUCKETHEAD really does thrash well. This long track is great at rockin’ the Casbah by keeping an idea just long enough and then changing it up. Once the thrash metal begins it sustains until the end. Way cool track. Tech thrash that evokes traditional techniques with a touch of technical progressiveness.

“Cavernous” (ELEVEN MINUTES FOURTEEN SECONDS) is the loooooongest track here. Starts off with a clean guitar lick in slow motion. Space rock? Floydian in a way. Cymbal percussion and slow drum beat. Oh no! One of those slow numbers! Run to the hills! Yep, it continues in slow-mo. Not bad but substandardarian space rock a la Pink Floyd. Nice mellow background music but don’t pay attention TOOOOO much or you’ll lose it. Meh

“Sank” (TWO MINUTES TWENTY SEVEN SECONDS) jumps back into thrash metal mode but this little track that is short but sweet in nothing memorable.

Bascially “Swung Vault” is the only track that is worth listening to on this one. Another one track PIKE with filler. Quantity over quality once again. If this is the only PIKE you’ve heard you’ll love it but redundancy gets old when you’ve heard 100 plus of these. 2 stars