Release Date: Apr 12, 2019
Genre(s): R&B, Funk, Pop/Rock, Instrumental Rock
Record label: Daptone
Music Critic Score
How the Music Critic Score works
Buy V from Amazon
In 2015, Staten Island's Budos Band surprised fans with Burnt Offering; their first non-numbered title, it delivered a shift in musical direction. In addition to their trademarked fusion of Mulatu Astatke-inspired Ethio-jazz, Afrofunk, and hard-swinging R&B, they indulged a collective love for darker, '70s-era hard rock and psychedelia. With V they have fully integrated the latter aesthetic with the former.
The Budos Band V by The Budos Band The last Budos Band album, Burnt Offering, was a bit of a ringer, the first non-numbered recording (it would have been IV) and the first to incorporate elements of psychedelic rock and metal into his swaggering soul/blaxploitation/Ethio-jazz vibe. With V, the band is back from its Sabbath-y excursion, bearing a few souvenirs, but mostly on home territory. A crunchy, San Francisco-in-1968 guitar riff kicks off the album in "Old Engine Oil," but then the horn line picks up, the hand-drums thwack into view and the band leads from its strengths (and also the hips).
is available now