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artist.....: The Budos Band
album......: Burnt Offering
year.......: 2014
label......: Daptone Records
DAP-034
source.....: CDDA
moodswing..: Funk
releasesize: 72.09 MB
tracks.....: 10
length.....: 41:53
encoder....: VBR LAME 3.98.4 -v0
quality....: avg. 240kbps
scenealized: 04.10.2015
After three albums of uniformly
excellent, Afrofunk-fueled
instrumentalsùtitled, tellingly, The
Budos Band, The Budos Band II, and The
Budos Band III where were the Budos
Band to go? As great as their output
has been to date, the New York ensemble
had more or less painted themselves
into a corner. In truth, there were
many directions the group could have
headed toward on their fourth album,
but they dauntingly chose the path of
most imaginable resistance: doom metal.
Rub your eyes all you want; it won't
change that sentence. The Budos Band's
new album is called Burnt Offering and
from its wizard-sporting cover on down,
it draws heavily from the
late-'60s/early-'70s well of dark,
arcane proto-metal.
To be perfectly clear: This is not your
uncle's Primus-shirted funk-metal. The
majority of Burnt Offering is built on
the same framework that the Budos Band
has always used elegantly simple
guitar, deep pockets of syncopation,
and bold shouts of brass but here it's
been wreathed in the thick organ vamps
of the bands that helped inspire metal,
namely Iron Butterfly and Uriah Heep.
Those looking for kvlt cred won't find
it here, nor should they; the album's
heaviest tracks, like the fuzz-
slathered "Aphasia" and the gutbucket-
distorted title track don't come
anywhere near the metal orthodoxy of
Pentagram, let alone Black Sabbath.
This is still Afrofunk of the Fela Kuti
faith, with "Tomahawk" being the most
horn-splashed and intricately
polyrhythmic of the bunch.
When the delicate guitar intro of
"Magus Mountain" drops into a
propulsive, blown-out low gear, though,
it's as if Sir Lord Baltimore is
jamming with Maggot Brain-era
Funkadelic. The fidelity is
immaculately retro, saturated and
reverberating, which lends an even more
eerily anachronistic tone to simmering,
sinuous cuts such as "Black Hills" and
"Turn and Burn", the latter of which
lands the album in some swampy epoch of
alternate history. "Into the Fog" more
or less says it all; with organ chords
transmogrified into haunted-house
groans, and monstrous stomps shuffling
somewhere between Blue Oyster Cult's
"Godzilla" and Fela's "Zombie", the
song is all meat, zero subtext. Not
that an album this earthy needs
anything so subtle to get its freaky
point across.
Burnt Offering has its own kind of
subtlety, and most of it is in the
interplay between meter, genre, and
mood. When it falls a little flat, on
the tame, muted "Trail of Tears" and
"Shattered Winds", it still manages to
register as better-than-average
Afrofunk with a tasteful layer of
filthy hard rock smeared on top. It's
not a profound exercise in fusion, and
at times it seems the band might be
amusing themselves at the expense of
being taken seriously. But the most
remarkable thing about Burnt Offering
is that, at its core, it really isn't
all that much of a departure from what
the Budos Band has always done. The
neatest trick the album pulls off is in
finding the unexplored commonality
between Afrofunk and doom metal deep
grooves, murky atmosphere, hypnotic
riffsùthen playing them with joy and
loopy abandon. Spooky, funky, freedom-
loving fun: The chance to embrace
something like that doesn't come along
often, and it's to be cherished.
psst, more info at daptonerecords.com
01 Into The Fog 04:48
02 The Sticks 04:03
03 Aphasia 04:15
04 Shattered Winds 02:41
05 Black Hills 04:28
06 Burnt Offering 04:23
07 Trail Of Tears 02:42
08 Magus Mountain 05:19
09 Tomahawk 03:29
10 Turn And Burn 05:45