Released: May 15, 2011
Length: 31:10

“Lebrontron” kicks off the very first album in the very long Pike series that has gone on relentlessly for the last 11 years. Very riff-orientated with undistorted guitar tones, it wouldn’t be out of place as the soundtrack of some futuristic Sega Genesis action platformer starring a protagonist with a big gun, rippling muscles, and large sunglasses.

It always floors me to remember that Lebron James is barely three years older than me. I don’t have much of an opinion of the guy other than his puffy beard always sucks and he should lose it, but he was my absolutely favorite part of Trainwreck starring Amy Schumer and Bill Hader. Hader’s character was an orthopedic specialist who was Lebron James’ best friend. He just wanted Bill Hader to fall in love. It was adorable.

“Tonka” gets weird with it. Buckethead McFlanagan uses some of those buzzing electronic glissandos that he loves doing so much. I got a large Tonka semi-truck as a gift once when I was about four years old and I had to pretend to like it. I wasn’t a fucking truck kid. There was a little button on the side that went “KRRRRSSSHH” or something when you pressed it. I liked that part. The rest of it can go fly a kite.

Speaking of Lebron James, I’m very NOT into basketball or anyone associated with basketball so I spent the longest time confusing him with Kobe Bryant. Perhaps this was because they were the two most prominent players at the time? Or maybe I’m unfathomably racist! It took me a while to really differentiate the two, but I now know that Kobe Bryant was the rapist who died in a helicopter. This is what caused the Coronavirus pandemic.

“Crack the Sky” alternates between slow, baleful, ambient guitar and more of that tasty, heavy staccato riffage. There’s even this cool, soaring solo near the that has this incredible melody. It’s the only melody you’ll find out of all 1,050 Pikes. The song’s title may or may not be a reference to Mastodon’s fourth album from 2009, Crack the Skye, but I doubt it is. Mastadon is a cool band, and Buckethead is not a cool person, so never the twain shall meet. Buckethead was not influenced by the likes of bands like Mastodon. Buckethead was influenced by Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and H.P. Lovecraft and Bruce Lee movies.

“The Hatch” was most certainly a reference to fuckin’ Lost. That show single-handedly pulled me out of my desire to only, ONLY, watch comedy television. I shit you not, at the tender age of 20 I was sucked into the DVDs like I needed to breathe it instead of oxygen. It was a great show to pop my drama television cherry. My favorite character was Sawyer until he became a pussy. I also wanted to bone Alex Rousseau so badly. I was sad when she died. Spoiler alert.

“Picking the Feathers”? OK, this must be referring to Bucketheads obsession with KFC, which must also be one of his major influences I guess. I like how the slippery guitar plucking sounds like the closest musical depiction of picking feathers. This is only Pike #1, though. I wonder if he had any of this kind of forethought while making, say, Pike #192. Or maybe he just start fishing turds out of a toilet and spent four minutes mixing and mastering them before selling them to me for $2 a pop. This track also has these little sound effects near the end that sound like when your turn your volume up on your Microsoft computer. I actually had to check to make sure I wasn’t actually doing it! I checked each time! Not really, but I could have and that would have really burned my bunions.

Brian Eno composed the Windows 95 startup sound, but this album is almost over and that’s a story for another time.

How about the cover art? It’s Alive! Frankenstein’s monster! In the summer of 2007 I was going through some rough relationship-related sadness and the only thing that perked me up was watching Young Frankenstein. That movie didn’t change my life, but I laughed at the whole scene with Gene Hackman so it was worth it.

Thank you for joining me! The rest of this feature will be almost exactly the same, so I apologize for that in advance. Smell ya later.

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