Album Review: King Buffalo, The Burden of Restlessness
From the time Rochester, New York, trio King Buffalo announced in March that they’d be releasing three full-lengths over the course of the next 12 months — #3recordsin2021; a challenge as much about logistics in pressing and distributing schedules, if not more so, as about recording the material itself — with each one recorded in a different circumstance, anticipation has justly run high. The first of them, which is both part-one-of-three and the band’s third standalone long-player in its own right — a pivotal arrival for any act — is The Burden of Restlessness, which collects seven tracks across 40 minutes of existence plainly derailed. That is to say, had 2020 not played out as it did in times of pandemic and sociopolitical unrest, King Buffalo‘s third LP would invariably be a much different outing.
The Burden of Restlessness captures the tension of paranoia and fear in its sharp guitar chugs, the notion of things going wrong but proceeding apace in its odd time signatures, churning and roiling grooves and the melancholy and languishing brought on by lockdown and lack of direction in its lyrics, as well as the inward and outward frustration brought on by the decaying of American political norms, the country nearly confronting its troubled history with racism in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing protests, as well as the right wing anti-progress cacophony that eventually manifested in the (arguably successful) terrorist putsch on the US Capitol in January.
These things are real and brought to life throughout The Burden of Restlessness, which tightens some of the more open, jammier spirit King Buffalo has brought to bear across prior releases — they put out an EP, Dead Star (review here), last year to coincide with subsequently canceled tours; Live at Freak Valley (review here) followed months later, presenting their 2019 set at the German festival of the same name, then supporting their 2018 sophomore album, Longing to Be the Mountain (review here) — into a concise progressive aggression, at times reminiscent of earlier Tool, as with some of the lead work on “Locusts” or the thudding culmination of the penultimate “The Knocks,” but one way or the other a streamlining of purpose and expression on the part of the band, as ever comprised of guitarist/vocalist Sean McVay, bassist Dan Reynolds and drummer Scott Donaldson.
While the overarching three-album storyline remains untold, there is nothing that feels incomplete about The Burden of Restlessness. The darker themes are telegraphed by the album cover courtesy of Zdzislaw Beksinski and the band — McVay also helmed the recording and mixed — extend the thoughtfulness of their presentation to the material, telling of confusion without becoming confused in the telling. The synths that came to prominence in Dead Star and seemed to foreshadow where King Buffalo might have been headed with their next long-player are shouldered out of the foreground by the intensity of “Burning,” as the album’s opening line, “I turn my head from the stars,” feels like a direct and willful contrast to the title-track of their debut, 2016’s Orion (review here), which began with the call to the constellation, “Orion can you hear me?” The ensuing chorus, “Another year lost in the wasteland/Another day drowns in dust/Another one dead in the wasteland,” picks apart the passage of time in pandemic quarantine, familiar surroundings made ominous with a looming specter of death outside. Perhaps it’s a processing of trauma happening throughout The Burden of Restlessness, but the perspective is individual.
On a thematic level, King Buffalo are no strangers to lonelier or more depressive fare, but as the third verse of “Hebetation” finds McVay narrating, “Every night I close my eyes/I lie awake and try to pacify a listless mind/Nothing’s changed at 35/Still every night I dream a million different ways for me to die,” and the later “Silverfish” talks of “slithering away, from everything, and everyone,” the images are striking and real. In terms of point of view, the metaphor-laced approach holds consistent in what might be considered the more outward-facing “Locusts” and “Grifter,” which seem to speak to police brutality — “Hand of the shield/Suppressing the field” — and the cult of personality surrounding the American right wing’s descent into fascism — “He promises deliverance, day after day/Releasing only pestilence, and festering decay” — respectively.
The lyrics are essential here, of course, with McVay and Donaldson collaborating throughout, but it’s in the pairing of the final two tracks, “The Knocks” and “Loam,” that the full storyline of The Burden of Restlessness finds its self-contained resolution, regardless of what’s to come on King Buffalo‘s intended fourth and fifth long-players. “The Knocks” pushes as close to bottom as the band gets, “As I press my ear against the floor/A knocking beckons from the barricade on the door/I can hear it pounding more and more/Don’t think that I can take no more, don’t think I wanna live no more,” and “Loam” complements with an earned hopeful feeling, bringing the title-line in the context of, “I’m shedding the burden of restlessness/To rise from the loam of the nothingness,” the last lyrics and a far cry from the turning-eyes-from-the-sky setting out in “Burning.”
McVay in the position of producer/engineer is nothing new for King Buffalo, as he also helmed 2018’s Repeater EP (review here), Orion and Dead Star, but in addition to bringing lyrics into focus in new, pointed ways, The Burden of Restlessness is all the more complete for the manner in which the lyrics and instrumental progressions play off each other. To listen to Reynolds‘ bassline — he remains the secret weapon in King Buffalo‘s arsenal; low-key, keeping it all together as the drums push inextricably forward and the guitar stretches out — beneath the soaring lead of “Locusts,” or to chart the build of “The Knocks” or find the synth balanced into the midsection of “Loam” for melodic emphasis is to understand the individualized dynamic that King Buffalo have honed over the last seven years, and in encapsulating that as they have, The Burden of Restlessness fulfills its apparent promise in portraying the troubled time of its creation.
It is both a culmination of horrors and the initial steps beyond them, and the turn it makes in sound is no less full than anything they’ve done before; they are adjusting the balance of elements that have worked in their favor all along. I at this point have precious little insight as to how The Burden of Restlessness will play into the next King Buffalo full-length, or if it is intended to at all. Will that album pick up from this one, move into a different aspect of their style, readjust the balance again, and so on? Unknown. But not knowing doesn’t make the band’s overarching project any less exciting, and in making them a less predictable outfit as it does, The Burden of Restlessness can only be considered a success. It not only realizes a bridge between progressive heavy rock and psychedelia in a manner that is their own, but perhaps serves just as an initial stretch in an even wider blossoming of sound and craft. No matter what the next one or the one after brings, The Burden of Restlessness is one of 2021’s best and a fittingly otherworldly document of this surreal era.
King Buffalo, The Burden of Restlessness (2021)
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Str8 up: I preordered the vinyl and CD separately in case of pressing delays on the wax. This is madness! Madness?…no, this is audiophilia!