NORTHERN LIGHTS

BUCKETHEAD - PIKE 95 - Northern Lights 54th album out of 60 in 2014 and 124th overall All sounds brought to you by Buckethead and all instrumental This one clocks in at 28:42 and has two equally long tracks

NORTHERN LIGHTS (14:20) - begins super slow, super mellow with two clean guitars and then breaks into heavier rock that includes bass and drums. It then slows down a tad and does a little riff dance and echo reverbs. A nice melody builds but is one of those repetitive chord progression types. The echoplex is quite nice and the instrumentation is well balanced. The basic melody stays intact but slight variations over it spring forth and it continues in the same general mode for a while and then picks up steam allowing a bluesy yet quickened guitar solo to erupt around the five minute mark. The chord progression loop begins to wear thin about this point even as the guitar soloing relentless charges on and only gains intensity. Unfortunately a boring endless riff with impressive guitar soloing isn't very interesting. Meh. Oh wait. About 12 minutes in it stops and goes back to the original riffs from the beginning but still the same exact melody and minimal chord progressions only slowed down. Double meh

FLARE (14:22) - begins with a similar tempo and a distorted guitar riff before breaking into a bizarre echo reverb frenzy. It alternates with an alternate metal type of riffing and then they trade off again. This basically goes on and on like track one with a recurring chord progression that eventually bursts into a heavy metal loop with bluesy guitar soloing. While it starts out with some somewhat interesting alternating elements by the middle it is like a record skipping. Ugh. By the 22 minute mark of this PIKE i'm so ready for it to be over. Even as background music this is so irritating. I just find this so boring. Usually this type of PIKE is reserved for those mellow endless bore-a-thons so it has now been proven that heavy metal loops of non-interest exist in these here slunk stacks. Guitar work is impressive. Song structures are less than so