PIKE 77 - BUMBYRIDE DREAMLANDS

BUCKETHEAD - PIKE 77 - BUMBYRIDE DREAMLANDS 36th album out of 60 in 2014 and 106th overall All sounds brought to you by Buckethead and all instrumental This one has 9 tracks that clock in at 28:35

"Bumbyride Dreamlands" (1:55) is a hard and heavy metal with a galloping tempo track. Crunchy guitar and bass and percussive bombast turn into distorted arpeggios and power chords toward the end

"Torch" (4:21) is another lightning fast galloping speed metal track with crunchy riffs, beefy bass and matching drumming. It has a bit of thrash here and there but is basically rooted in classic 80s speed metal or US power metal. It's the kind of metal that makes me think an operatic singer is gonna come out and scream his ass off

"Propshop" (2:30) continues the heavy metal riffage but has a little groove thrash in its mix as well as some traditional metal and hard rock aspects

"Hub And Spoke Plan" (1:49) starts out slow with clean gloomy guitars for a few seconds before breaking into a classic metal riff. This one has a bit more variety with off timings and alternates the heavy and subdued

"Sunken Claphouse" (2:25) begins like one of those early Van Halen songs. Kinda like "Ain't Talkin Bout Love" but then alternates this same riff with a heavier riff sequence that also includes some Pantera-esque groove thrash (think the ending of "Domination")

"Asteroid Belt" (4:23) begins with another metal riff that starts off somewhat mid tempo and then bursts into full fury. Definitely has an early Van Halen edge to it. It has a decent mix of riffs thru out

"Land" (4:18) is yet another heavy metal riff monster mixed with power chords and also adds a touch of thrash metal to the mix. It also has slow odd clean riff sections. This one does have some interesting time sigs going on in the riffs at times

"Bend" (2:38) sounds a bit like the "Holy Wars" intro on Megadeth's "Rust In Peace" for the first riff but then mixes it up with a slower riff here and there. It also has some alternative metal type passages as well

"Sharp Drop" (4:15) is another frenetic metal rocker with lightning fast riffs and thundering bass and drums. At this point it sounds like most other tracks on this PIKE. It has the same type of mixing it up with different riffs, some speed changes but it's basically good old school type of speed metal riff from the past

This one is a fairly decent PIKE but in all honesty it's a little too one dimensional for me as a BUCKETHEAD album. If it had vocals attached it would be much better but sounds like instrumental outtakes for another heavy metal band mostly