Albums for Eternity with Bottle, the Curmudgeon

Today we're listening to King Buffalo's 2nd pandemic album Acheron (pronounced "ack," not "ash" because admit it, you weren't sure). We'll listen to the first and 3rd at some point, i just wanted to highlight some of the truly bizarre things about this album.  First, this is an LP with only 4 songs on it. You'd think that would make it an EP with super long songs, but nope, this is a full on Storytime album about waking up in a cave, setting sail, and getting shipwrecked and having to fight Cerberus like Perseus on his way to slay Medusa. It's like the short, short version of their first 4 albums.  Second, this album was recorded in a cave. Now look, i'm not saying they stole my idea, but i am going to point out that the joke about my 2018 EP I Hear The View Is Lovely (3 years before this 2021 album) was that i spent $45,000 recording it in a cave in Norway when in actuality i recorded the entire thing on a used Epiphone SG i paid $80 for...

Ok, so i've been nursing listening to ...And Justice For All for a couple weeks because i originally wanted to do the "my Metallica" thing, but then i had the thought that a) it should be a story about why the Blackened recordings are are special, and 2) is there a band that has worn its biography as its face tattoo more than Metallica?, and Tripod) Jason Newstead deserves his own story altogether, but then i finally said you know what, no, i am a wing it kind of guy, so i just opened it to find the Ride The Lightening lyric sheet inside. On your worst day of consciousness on this planet in this polyp of the multiverse, at least your multi-national corporation didn't upload the wrong PDF and press about 4 million dollars worth of copies. Then again, i doubt anybody 1) got fired because who cares?, B) got yelled at because who cares?, and C) they did an entire tour where they faked a catastrophe at every show and after an hour or so played songs from Kill 'Em All f...

We've made it to Dead Star, and i have a theory. Once i say it you might think i've finally lost it and gone completely mad, but i'm ok with that. I'm just describing my experience, and i'm perfectly fine if that experience is bonkers. Ready? I don't think these are albums. I think, similar to Coheed and Cambria, these are individual chapters of a much larger meta album. I think the band is leading us listeners on a guided meditation through an epic stoner doom space opera, dungeon mastering if you will. We are the protagonist, the story is our experience of imagining it. Dead Star is the last album before a Quarantine Trilogy, let's see if my theory holds water.  You wake up to a red glow all around and wonder what's happening. Sand and stone as before, but now it's all metaphorically afire. You've come to burn down the castle and free the land from the evil opulence that oppreses it. Lots of people have commented on the anti-fascist undertones,...

Next up on our adventure through the King Buffalo discography, the awesomely titled Longing To Be The Mountain. Once again we find ourselves alone in the vastness of space, surrounded by wilderness, desperately waiting for the sunrise, longing to be the mountain that stands before and towers over us.  Longing To Be The Mountain is a meditative, solitary, spiritual experience that simply cannot be put into words, only experienced. If feels a bit silly to just gush about each album, but there will be a point. Until we get there, though, just enjoy it. I certainly do. Dead Star

The Repeater EP is the second album from King Buffalo. Still trippy and spacious, the groove for the title track is much lighter than anything on Orion, until about the 8 minute mark when the riff turns brain pulverising and the universe explodes. Lyrically, it's a meditation on this adventure life where every day is the same.  Too Little Too Late cranks up the doom to 11 as the experimental electronic noisescape writhes around you exactly like the cover art implied it would. More than anything, King Buffalo excels at putting tiny little you inside an incomprehensibly vast and complicated almost magical space, and Centurion is no different as you can't help but imagine yourself dig through the sand until your hands are raw and bleeding after the legion you commanded abandoned you in the desert. Or maybe you're the only survivor of the battle, scrambling to get back to civilization. Regardless, tomorrow will be no different and the grind will keep repeating.  3 tracks, all t...

So, i did a thing. I bought all 7 King Buffalo albums because hot damn they are amazing. They're a Heavy Psych band from Rochester, NY. Predominant flavors of Black Sabbath and Mastodon float atop a sludgy doomy amalgum of stoner/space rock on their debut epic Orion.  How in the world do you review it, though? I am at a loss for words. There have been quite a few albums i can't review. Blackstar and Sailing the Seas of Cheese spring to mind, but sometimes albums are so perfectly crafted that there is no real entry point, nothing that is not self explanatory, nothing to defend or criticize or contextualize; they are in essence perfect in and of themselves, and can only be experienced by closing your eyes and listening.  I suppose what gives me most pause is that Orion is not in any way a debut album. I don't simply mean the mundane fact of their prior demo and split album with Lè Betre, rather that there is no "getting to know you" aspect to this first album. This ...

Some albums are famous, some albums are infamous, and then there's Maggot Brain. If you thought System of a Down required an infitite rabbit hole of research to properly mentally grasp, you ain't seen nothing. From Tawl Ross's LSD bender induced brain damage to the title track's "play like your mom just died" to the Scientology splinter cell of a satanist church that is the Process Church of the Final Judgement, to the fart sounds in Wars of Armageddon, this seemingly innocuous little Funk Rock album will leave you wondering why everybody doesn't adore it. The answer of course is racism, but even without the support of radio play i highly doubt you know nothing of George Clinton.  That being said, the album is actually super listenable and easy to love. Structurally, the album is bookended by two massive instrumentals, Maggot Brain and Wars of Armageddon, with various shorter and catchy Funk jams in the middle. A Funk sandwich, if you will. Thematically, t...