{"id":125564,"date":"2025-01-22T11:00:36","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T17:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/?p=125564"},"modified":"2025-01-22T07:01:52","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T13:01:52","slug":"review-bumblefoot-bumblefoot-returns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/review-bumblefoot-bumblefoot-returns\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Bumblefoot &#8211; Bumblefoot&#8230;Returns!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Hey sorry I was out for a bit there, guys. I was in the bathroom.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Bumblefoot&#8217;s return to solo material actually marks the first time I had heard of the guy. In my defense, when his debut solo album released I think I was more concerned with finger painting and looking forward to naptime and a snack, and in the years after that I didn&#8217;t much care for <strong>Guns N&#8217; Roses<\/strong>, where he had a steady gig playing guitar with the group.<\/p>\n<p>That being said, I think it ended up being really cool to go into this promo without having much familiarity with the musician himself, because it&#8217;s an incredibly strong and varied offering and does one of my favorite things of all time where it refuses to stick to a single easily-defined genre. You could stick it under the prog-rock\/metal umbrella, but that category is so wide and varied that on its own it doesn&#8217;t mean much.<\/p>\n<p>The first two tracks give what one might expect to hear when delving into a progressive instrumental rock and metal record, with tons of polish and a lot of twisty earworm licks and riffs. There&#8217;s a lot of funky use of textures and synth sounds that I like quite a bit and if you like <strong>Devin Townsend<\/strong> at all these tracks will almost definitely be right up your alley.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\"  style=\"display: block; margin: 0px auto;\"  id=\"_ytid_85536\"  width=\"320\" height=\"240\"  data-origwidth=\"320\" data-origheight=\"240\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ahh-Q0gveWM?enablejsapi=1&#038;autoplay=0&#038;cc_load_policy=0&#038;cc_lang_pref=&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;loop=0&#038;modestbranding=0&#038;rel=1&#038;fs=1&#038;playsinline=1&#038;autohide=2&#038;theme=dark&#038;color=red&#038;controls=1&#038;\" class=\"__youtube_prefs__  epyt-is-override  no-lazyload\" title=\"YouTube player\"  allow=\"fullscreen; accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen data-no-lazy=\"1\" data-skipgform_ajax_framebjll=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Then &#8220;Moonshine Hootenanny&#8221; kicks in, and this is where I was really hooked. It&#8217;s still proggy and heavy, but the hootenanny building blocks made this track a ton of fun. Unfortunately, at least on my end my enthusiasm went down a bit with the next track, a prog rock rendition of Chopin&#8217;s Waltz (Op. 62 no. 2). This might just be a Ben thing, but much in the way I tend to really not like Muzak\/classical easy listening arrangements of popular music, popular music renditions of classical pieces tend to fall a bit flat for me. In both cases there are critical subtleties that get lost in translation. This rendition is decent on a technical level, but it just doesn&#8217;t really do it for me overall.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe style=\"border: 0; width: 420px; height: 120px;\" src=\"https:\/\/bandcamp.com\/EmbeddedPlayer\/album=3441846601\/size=large\/bgcol=ffffff\/linkcol=0687f5\/tracklist=false\/artwork=small\/transparent=true\/\" seamless=\"\"><span style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bumblefoot.bandcamp.com\/album\/returns\">&#8230;Returns! by Bumblefoot<\/a><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Enough bellyaching, though. Aside from the talented Mr. Bumblefoot himself, this album has a few guest appearances from Steve Vai, Brian May, Guthrie Govan, and Ben Karas. Each track with a guest musician is a different vibe and really does let the guest&#8217;s brand of musicianship shine through. My faves out of the guest features are &#8220;Monstruoso,&#8221; featuring Steve Vai, and &#8220;Funeral March&#8221; featuring Ben Karas, though all of them are very worth listening to.<\/p>\n<p>My top three tracks overall would be &#8220;Simon in Space,&#8221; &#8220;Planetary Lockdown,&#8221; and &#8220;Monstruoso,&#8221; but the entire album is more than worth listening to and has a ton of funk and variety to it, and everything has a lot of musicality to it.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">4\/5 Flaming Toilets ov Hell<\/h2>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-48992 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/NEW_TOILETSCALE_4_of_5-1.jpg?resize=709%2C162&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"709\" height=\"162\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/NEW_TOILETSCALE_4_of_5-1.jpg?resize=1024%2C234&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/NEW_TOILETSCALE_4_of_5-1.jpg?resize=300%2C68&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/NEW_TOILETSCALE_4_of_5-1.jpg?resize=768%2C175&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/NEW_TOILETSCALE_4_of_5-1.jpg?w=1249&amp;ssl=1 1249w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 709px) 100vw, 709px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8230;Returns!<\/em> is out on January 26. If you dig it you can buy it digitally on <a href=\"https:\/\/bumblefoot.bandcamp.com\/album\/returns\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bandcamp<\/a> or physically through bumblefoot.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hey sorry I was out for a bit there, guys. I was in the bathroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":125605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"BSG and Bumblefoot...more compatible than you knew!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,39,403,70],"tags":[18555,18554,6051,1326,11875,4705],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/bblfthdr.jpg?fit=710%2C375&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125564"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125564"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125606,"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125564\/revisions\/125606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}