The Budos Band
Burnt Offering
Release Date: Oct 21, 2014
Genre(s): R&B, Funk, Pop/Rock, Psychedelic, Neo-Psychedelia, Instrumental Rock, African Traditions, Afro-beat
Record label: Daptone
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Album Review: Burnt Offering by The Budos Band
Great, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 7.8/10
For the first five years of their existence, it was a fairly simple matter to take a guess at the title of the next Budos Band recording. That’s what happens when your debut is called The Budos Band and the next two albums are The Budos Band II and The Budos Band III. That’s called establishing a precedent. And so, when the Staten Island “instrumental afro-soul” band announced that their Oct.
Based on rating 7.3/10
After three albums of uniformly excellent, Afrofunk-fueled instrumentals—titled, tellingly, The Budos Band, The Budos Band II, and The Budos Band III—where were the Budos Band to go? As great as their output has been to date, the New York ensemble had more or less painted themselves into a corner. In truth, there were many directions the group could have headed toward on their fourth album, but they dauntingly chose the path of most imaginable resistance: doom metal. Rub your eyes all you want; it won’t change that sentence.
Opinion: Excellent
You know when you come across one of those albums that just sounds brilliant; a thrilling, visceral, jump-up-and-down slab of heavy dynamics and gut-punching grooves? It's like it's always existed, but you've just never heard it before? Well, The Budos Band's Burnt Offering is one of those records, and it is righteous indeed. The Budos Band are a nine-piece instrumental group from Staten Island, who've previously released three albums' worth of hard-hitting afro-funk party music, dense with horns and congas. Their last album started to see a bit of B-movie darkness creep into their sound, the funk increasingly mired in nocturnal gloom.
Opinion: Excellent
Although the first three Budos Band albums (helpfully titled I, II and III) were generally regarded as straight-up Afro-beat and jazz-tinged funk/soul, rock elements did creep into the mix, and in recent years reviews of the instrumental group’s live shows have steadily grown more and more psychedelic. Burnt Offering is the culmination of that evolution, and it’s telling that they opted not to title it Budos Band IV; that mystic sleeve artwork, done by art teacher (and Budos drummer) Brian Profilio isn’t a coincidence, either. They said as much when announcing the record, noting how it “reflects their love of Black Sabbath and Pentagram as much as it does Fela Kuti.
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