KALEIDOSCALP

Back in the early two-thousand and zeroes before Buckethead wrote albums more frequently than he changed his socks, what I call "Lazy Bucket" only produced 2-3 albums per year. Now, while apparently he didn't give much of a crap about his fans who sometimes had to wait for an entire season change for a new album, he managed to produce some rather healthy work. And really, who didn't take a little hiatus to mourn the duration of a Kardashian marriage whence they fell off the market? I shall forgive Mr. Head in that regard, but I digress.

In this case, Kaleidoscalp, his second of three releases in 2005, has become my second favorite of his releases (to this point), coming in runner-up only to Monsters and Robots. This album excites from the intro which loops in a sequence from, György Ligeti's Requiem for Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano (the monolith scene choral sound from 2001: A Space Odyssey). The overall feel of the album is instrumental prog metal with a major avantgarde slant. A slant that takes an increasingly precipitous angle as the album gets into its latter stages. The rhythm guitar sounds can frequently be characterized as complex sludge. And while it has never been in question that Buckethead's soloing style is a predominately metal style, the prevailing rhythm sections have seemed to hit more of a funk angle on previous releases. Kaleidoscalp hits the metal mark in the rhythm department much of the time, at times even introducing djentish polymetrics. And in fact, the solos do not appear nearly as frequently as say Giant Robot or Monsters and Robots. The electronics that permeate so previous albums are there, but do not dominate. The gentlest moment of the album occurs on the finale, She Sells Sea Shells By The Slaughterhouse, which is a sweet instrumental ballad that uses undistorted electric guitars. Well, it is an 11 minute piece and the nice nice part only lasts about 4 minutes of that. After that, a bashing session begins.

To summarize: up to this point in his discography (which as it turns out is about the 4% mark) Kaleidoscalp is by far the heaviest hitter, and as near as I can tell, the most complex. This will be one that won't collect much dust. 4 stars.