TOURIST

PIKE 126 - TOURIST is the 25th album released by BUCKETHEAD in 2015. As with all the PIKES i've heard this one is all instrumental with BUCKETHEAD handling all musical duties and contains six tracks clocking in near the half hour mark at 29:54.

The first track "Glow Worm" is by far the longest track and at 14:04 nearly swallows up half the running time. It starts out with a mid- paced grungy alternative metal guitar riff and accompanying bass and drums. It kinda goes on for awhile but the riffs change it up every now and again with an echoey guitar and sometimes a military march drum roll. It's a decent rocker but doesn't have enough variation to warrant such a lengthy run. In other words - very boring.

The title track is a short followup at 1:54 and is a more energetic heavy metal rocker with a solo that barely gets started and then ends as quickly as a hard punk song. Not terribly exciting.

Track three "Ticket To Extinguish" is a bit longer at 3:15 and is extremely funky with both guitar and bass and not Red Hot Chili Peppers funk, more like the real thing from Funkadelic or Parliament only with some virtuosic guitar runs added. This one is actually pretty good but not outstandingly awesome.

Track four "Bookend Alley" end the funky mood and bursts into thrashy heavy metal riffing and lightning fast guitar solos that race up and down the scales at breakneck speed. This is an energetic little beast fully caffeinated and fueled with repetitive riffing, solos, bridges and a few different types of guitar tricks. Decently done but neither outstandingly awesome.

Track five "Break For The Slide" is a short little 2:06 acoustic blues slide guitar (only) instrumental. It is very different from anything i've heard from BH in a while. It's not bad. Kinda purposefully dissonant and off. OK only

Track six "Storage" is the second longest track at 4:23 and steps right back into hard and heavy metal riffing with immediate soloing trading off with the main riff. It spirals off into massive riffing, breakneck speed solos and and more riffing and more soloing and yet more riffing and yet more soloing and then guess what? Nothing

This one isn't horrible but it's not great either. It's meh-meh-meh-diocre. 2.5 rounded down