THE REVENGE OF WICKED KING PICKLE KNICKER

OGO DYS was one of the many alter egos of Swedish based Magnus Lundberg. This project began in 2008 with the debut release "Neptune Everywhere" and effectively ended in 2013 with this final 2-disc compilation of demos, mixes and alternative versions of tracks that appeared on the project's four albums and two EPs. There are also unreleased tracks so all in all this is a nicely packaged grande finale for anyone who wasn't scared away by the very first time they heard this stuff however this is about as obscure and eclectic as it gets so i would venture to guess that i could count the number of true fans on my fingers.

This compilation titled WICKED KING PICKLE KNICKER was all recorded from 2008 to 2010 when Lundberg recorded all the OGO DYS tracks that ended up on "Neptune Everywhere," "Overion-3," "Iulpius Dyn," "Azynder!," "Ohm" and "One-Sided LP." For whatever reasons all these tracks were rejected from the final cut of all those albums and EPs and here they are just awaiting your condemnation as they pretty much run the gamut of all the styles presented on those albums which includes Frank Zappa wackiness in avant-prog splendor, Cardiacs punk infused pronk energy, angular Univers Zero detachment, quirky Mr Bungle genre hopping and tons of other fun like funk, death metal, symphonic rock, surf rock, spaghetti western motifs, Oingo Boingo circus charm and just good old fashioned noise!

This one is a lengthy beast that boasts 40 tracks and just squeaks past the 96 minute mark for playing time and as always all music was written, performed and produced by Magnus E.A. Lundberg. Well, now. To be honest most of the alternative outtakes don't offer much as the music is so quirky and eclectic small details don't really matter and you'd have to be the utmost music nerd to even care about such things given this music is all about being weird for weird's sake so this is very much a supplemental release that offers a few bonus tracks of unreleased material but honestly there's nothing on here that is mind-glowingly different from what came before so even if you have fallen under the eclectic spell of the OGO DYS hypnosis, you still won't find this one to be an essential release but well worth it if you are a completist as there is nothing that won't fly your freakazoid flag at full staff.

Given the intensity of this music, the 30 minute mark is probably the appropriate limit of digesting such brutal prog so sitting through a 96 minute frenetic mind-numbing bombast of this avant-prog run amok will probably prove taxing for all but the most intense stalwarts of stentorian prog antics on steroids, however i was up to the task for the sake of reviewing this juggernaut of freneticism! My problem is i don't like redundancy on albums and although this is a compilation it's hard to tell what's different from the original cuts and there aren't enough new sounds to really make this feel like nothing more than a favorite tracks sort of album. Yeah there are some nice ragtime bits and traditional bits like "Dies Irae" but those aren't the freak out styles of OGO DYS that rocks my world. "Untitled II" is some nice avant-jazz as well. This is a good release that simply puts out all the unused material but inessential since the four albums and two EPs more than cover all bases of this wickedly wild freak of nature.