DISSECTING BUCKETHEAD
Part 7/50
Somewhere Over The Slaughterhouse is Buckethead’s seventh solo release. To recap and give you a brief history of Buckethead’s solo records, his first two records were
Bucketheadland and
Giant Robot. With these two records he established a recognizable sound and they were quality albums. With
Day Of The Robot, Buckethead decided to experiment a little more with electronic elements. While making for an above average album, it was quite repetitive at times and was a bit of a misstep in his discography.
Colma introduced us to Buckethead’s more mellow side, it was an excellent record and arguably one of his most popular. He returned to his roots in a sense with his fifth record,
Monsters & Robots, which saw him returning to his roots in a sense while introducing us to new musical ideas. The last thing Buckethead released before
Somewhere Over The Slaughterhouse was
KFC Skin Piles, which was a sub-par EP meant for DJs to use for mixing and scratching. So far, the aforementioned EP was the worst thing he has released. Can Buckethead bounce back and provide us with quality work?
Buckethead’s seventh studio album is a strange one to say the least (even for Big B’s standards). In fact, this is probably his strangest solo recording so far. This album has a similar electronic atmosphere as
Day Of The Robot. However, it also takes elements from a lot of his previous recordings and even some new ideas are included. This is what sets it apart from
Day Of The Robot.
Somewhere Over The Slaughterhouse is also a much more varied collection of recordings. Although the music plods sometimes and can be a little bland, Buckethead has managed to return to form and has provided us with something more listenable than
KFC Skin Piles.
The variety within the tracks keep
Somewhere Over The Slaughterhouse interesting when listening to it in full. The album opens up with “Somewhere Over The Slaughterhouse”, its title track. The song is an acoustic rendition of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” that slowly becomes more and more mangled as the song goes on. It is an acceptable intro to the album, and at 38 seconds, it manages to wrap up before it drags. “Day Of The Ulcer”, the album’s longest song, contrasts the album’s title track almost entirely by being some weird mixture of electronica and sludge metal. The song has a couple ambient parts throughout and a lot of weird atonal riffs. “Wires And Clips” sounds like avant-garde video game music with the synths in its intro. Lastly, album highlight “Burlap Curtain” has an extremely unexpected but entirely welcome disk-scratching solo that really fits well on the album. The disk-scratching and Buckethead’s brief shred attacks trade off solos for awhile in this song, making for a very unique dynamic.
Somewhere Over The Slaughterhouse is a really weird album. For example, “You Like This Face?” has the strangest electronic sounds in its intro, I don’t think I have heard similar dynamics. The track shows that Buckethead is likely influenced by noise artists. He manages to mix these electronic elements with his own guitar playing to create a very odd but musical piece. “Knockingun” is a pretty neat and unique track on the album. It features some programmed drum beats and wavering synths along with a blaring siren. “My Sheetz” manages to mix a rhythm part that you would expect to be from
Somewhere Over The Slaughterhouse with multiple delayed clean guitar melodies that one might hear on
Colma.
The issue
Somewhere Over The Slaughterhouse suffers from is that it can get quite repetitive at times. As an example, “Help Me” has a few interesting eastern-sounding riffs. However, the song goes on for way too long with the same beat to stay very interesting. Also, the cheesy synths in “Pin Bones And Poultry” become a bit grating as they blast during most of the song in its 4:43 runtime. Finally, acoustic album closer “Conveyor Belt Blues”, while having an interesting opening guitar line, goes on for way too long to keep anyone’s attention. I like the fact that the album opens with an acoustic piece and ends with one, but Buckethead could have refined and changed this track a little and made it more interesting.
Somewhere Over The Slaughterhouse is Buckethead’s weirdest album to so far. There is a lot of variety to be found on this album and there are a lot of cool ideas. While this album can plod and drag at times, it is still a solid addition to his eclectic discography. I would recommend this album to people who enjoyed
Day Of The Robot and in general to Buckethead’s fans. This album is a very interesting and underrated departure that will definitely be appreciated if a Buckethead fan gives it a chance.
OVERALL RATING: 3.5/5
