Head In A Bird Cage [Vinyl]

It has always been in the Buck Gooter DNA to work through the impossible - on the new album Head In A Bird Cage, this includes death. “When he was dying, and they had to rush him into another room because he was flatlining, Terry was singing.” That’s Billy Brett of the Virginia industrial blues band - he’s relating bandmate Terry Turtle’s last Earthly moments, rocking out as he crossed to the other side. For fifteen years, Buck Gooter has been one of the underground’s hardest working bands, releasing eighteen full-length albums (if you don’t count any of the live albums) and playing over seven-hundred shows. Buck Gooter is the story of two musicians who went from acquaintances to friends to family, creating a singular discography in the process, and not letting anything stand in the way. At the end of his life, Turtle charged Brett with continuing as Buck Gooter.

Head In A Bird Cage functions as a testament to the band’s legacy and ethos - songs like lead single “Nailed To A Cross” or the industrial nugget “We Let The Blood” are up front, raw, and powerful, recalling the wild sonic abandon of touring buddies A Place To Bury Strangers, and the throbbing, raw energy of Buck Gooter’s collaborators ONO. Buck Gooter is truly one of a kind, though, and they proudly remind us of this on “What We Do Is Pathological”: “what we do is pathological. That’s all you need to know.” Head In A Bird Cage is far from an epitaph - it’s a metamorphosis, an exercise in persistence after a band member has graduated from their earthly body. It’s Turtle with a sheepish grin, putting an arm around you, reassuring the living that death is not the end.