Torn From Black Space is the first new album from virtuoso shred-god Buckethead's experimental dark ambient project Death Cube K in close to a decade, save for some extremely limited fan-club style Cdr releases that have popped up over the years. In fact, I was surprised to see this disc was out since I had assumed that Buckethead had stopped working under the Death Cube K a long time ago. This disc is an interesting return for this project though, with Buckethead joined by Bill Laswell (Painkiller, The Blood of Heroes, Praxis, Last Exit, etc.) and Submerged. The group cited the likes as Sunn as inspiration for this newest collection of abstract dark guitar/electronic ambience, but Torn From Black Space sounds like it could have come out on Pathological back in the 90s and has much more in common with the fractured isolationism and stygian electronics of Final and Lull than the current ambient metal pack. The sound is birthed from processed guitar that becomes virtually unrecognizable, and is then twisted and infested with all kinds of horrific sound events and surreal swirling drift. Buckethead fans who are looking for more of his trademark hyperspeed shredding are going to be disappointed with this, but folks who dig formless black metallurgy will find a vast abyss of sound contained on this disc.

Centered around Buckethead's treated guitar sounds, Laswell's submarine bass tones and Submerged's abstract turntable manipulations, Torn From Black Space gets started with "Slow Descent", where billowing clouds of slow mo guitar feedback and amp rumble are layered with distorted electronics and distant percussion. Swells of lush Lustmordian blackness wash through the abyssal expanse alongside clusters of shimmering guitar, and strange fluttering noises and peals of dark melody fade into the blackness. "Hallow Ground" opens into a chasm of black-hole drift, processed and distorted synthesizer drones, over-modulated guitar noise, and super abstract subterranean electronica; scraping noises and gasping breath pans from left to right, and there are growling electronic tones here that evoke the darkest of 70s synthesizer space odysseys. Strange vocal sounds and brief bits of speech flit through the blackness as we head into the nocturnal wilderness of "Watchers", where the sounds of night birds, frogs, and crickets float over more eerie guitar and curtains of ambient hiss. Monstrous croaking vocalizations emerge, and as the simple, dreamy minor key guitar rises over the twilight sounds, a simple spare drum starts to slowly pound away in the background while swooping synth effects appear amidst swells of cymbal shimmer.

The last half of the album begins to get more abrasive. "Path of the Dead" starts as glitchy computer noise but then wanders into a kind of twilight exotica with hand-drums, tambourines and musical chimes joined with female vocals. The eleven minute soundscape "Night Crawler" combines cavernous drift with didgeridoo-like buzzing and gleaming synthetic drones punctured with loud blasts of clipped metallic guitar. At first this track is spacious and sprawling, but then it erupts into a crushing metallic groove, massive metal riffage droning amid guttural drones and dubbed-out snares and howling processed horns, a strange and surreal fractured drone-metal that quickly submerges back into the digital darkness. It's without question the heaviest moment on the album. And the comes "Hidden Chamber", another epic slab of black cosmic ambience streaked with sax-like screams, pulsating electronics, swells of massive distorted guitar and metallic percussion echoing through the depths.

Even if you're not usually a fan of Buckethead's music, this is radically different from almost everything else that I've heard from him. It's almost like a cross between the avant guitar soundscapery of someone like KK Null, pitch-black 70's space music, and Lustmord/Lull-style dark ambience. If that Pathological reference I mentioned earlier stoked your interest in the least, you should really check the audio samples out.

Comes in digipack packaging.