Enter the Chicken

With Enter the Chicken Buckethead goes accessible—for him, anyway. Every incarnation of the Bucketed One appears here: guitar-shredder supreme, avant-garde noodler, demented circus clown. He even sings on a few tracks. The album is as schizophrenic as its creator, ranging from the heavy metal assault of “Botnus” to the (dare we say it) radio-friendly “Running From the Light” and “Waiting Hare,” the latter featuring the vocals of Serj Tankian of System of a Down who also produced the CD. He gets further help from metal screecher Efrem Shulz, Azam Ali of Vas, and, on “Three Fingers,” MC Saul Williams, who deadpan raps over a funk metal groove. Buckethead’s bizarre and irreverent sense of humor is also on display in such songs as “Funbus,” a campy, death metal shot at artists (and listeners) who take themselves too seriously. He does fire off a few of the lightning-speed solos for which he is revered in certain circles, but the emphasis is on the compositions and overall flow of the songs. He may be eclectic, but on Enter the Chicken, he also manages to be focused.