Pumpkin Buzzard — Punk Slime

“Punk Slime” sees the return of this mysterious & unhinged US project. As always this new release is a wonky, off-colour & deranged mixture of various musically styles merged & mixed together to create that distictive & unwell musical sound that could only be Pumpkin Buzzard.

This time around the guys(& girls?!) offer up 28 tracks that move from : woozy & guttural growled mixers of pitch descend art punk & sliding metal, discordant & ugly pop punk, vocal-less indie punk runs, Skittering & unwell acoustic guitar pop & rudimentary organ wonders. Onto moody, melancholic & murky instrumental drifts into avant jazz territory that brew together off-kilter horn work, & wonky keyboard/organ textures.  Through to spastic & sloppily jerking dumb synth pumped metal/ punk. Onto chugging gone wrong King Crimson Red period work outs with demented frat boy yells on top

Sadly on the whole this album rather lacks both the off-kilter charm, & ear for creatively deranged yet tuneful song craft that they past few Pumpkin Buzzard albums had. But on the plus side the dips into murky, nightmarish & wonky avant jazz are most surprising & effective. So to sum-up not the best thing this project has put out thus far, but the surprising jazz elements make it worth a try for Pumpkin Buzzard aficionados. Though this is certainly not a place for newbie’s to start