King Buffalo

Vitskär Süden – The Faceless King Review

Vitskär Süden – The Faceless King Review

“Well, this is certainly a unique release in many ways, and thanks to the bureaucracy of our PDS this one slipped by everyone and right down to me. Meet Vitskär Süden, a progressive/psychedelic/overall trippy band that hails not from some esoteric land as the umlauts in their name might suggest, but rather from Los Angeles, California. These guys have been playing together in some form or other for around twenty years now, but as Vitskär Süden this is their second release. The Faceless King follows up 2020’s well-regarded eponymous debut.” Dungeons and prog kings.

King Buffalo – Regenerator Review

King Buffalo – Regenerator Review

Last year, in the midst of endless lockdowns, I got my lucky mittens on King Buffalo’s excellent The Burden of Restlessness. I had not heard another record that more perfectly encapsulated the experience of isolation resulting from the pandemic, nor have I since. The album was announced to be the start of a rapid-fire trilogy, the finale supposed to come out before the year was through. The vinyl crash elongated that schedule a tad, which caused part two, Acheron, to drop in the middle of list season and tumble between wall and ship. It had deserved better; not only is it a wondrous and otherworldly psychedelic trip, the whole album was recorded live in an actual cave for a unique sound not easily reproduced. So let me make it up to the band by at least addressing the closing chapter of the pandemic trilogy: Regenerator.” Royal animals.

King Buffalo – The Burden of Restlessness Review

King Buffalo – The Burden of Restlessness Review

“As a web developer, short release cycles are second nature. We iterate over our code, and ideally, every cycle it comes out a little better, a little more complete. When it comes to albums, on the other hand, short release cycles make me wary. Genius takes time, as the idiom goes, and though there’s certainly been genius albums scratched out in a hurry and turds that baked for decades, it seems to hold up in a general sort of way. Now New York stoner trio King Buffalo has decided to release three albums in the span of a year, while immediate predecessor Dead Star is but a year old. The gorgeous album art for the first of the hat-trick only assuages my fears a small amount. Is The Burden of Restlessness rushed? Does it drag?” Whiiiiplaaaash.