The thing about Buzz Osborne is that you always know what you’re gonna get.
It doesn’t really matter what band he’s working with, whether it’s The Melvins, Crystal Fairy, or his solo work as King Buzzo. Osborne is the kinda guy and kinda musician that knows what he likes, knows what he wants, and knows how to get it done. It doesn’t much matter how much one album might be different from the next, you’re always going to get something that’s unabashedly, defiantly Buzz.
There’s a comfort in that. In world that seems so dead set on changing itself every few years, the kind of stability that Buzz offers is a welcome respite. Even with his evolutionary changes over the years, there remains that indefinable self that permeates his every album, every song, and every band. Buzz is Buzz, as it has always been, as it shall always be.
And so it is on his latest King Buzzo release, Gift of Sacrifice. Exploring the same stripped down, acoustic space first explored five years ago on This Machine Kills Artists, Gift of Sacrifice finds Osborne flexing the might of his compositional prowess to deliver a new side of his talent that is, above all else, purely and wholly Buzz.
His aided in this outing by frequent collaborator, bassist Trevor Dunn—the album is, in fact, billed as King Buzzo with Trevor Dunn—who brings new layers to Osborne’s depth of sound to create a wild amalgamation of blues, traditional folk, and sludge into a powerhouse of musical intensity. Most of the album is simply these two masters of craft doing what they do best to deliver bone chilling meditations on life in this modern world.
Dunn’s efforts and additions are felt immediately as the introductory track, the instrumental “Mental Vomit,” fades into the album’s proper opener, “Housing, Luxury, Energy.” King Buzzo’s mesmerizing dark folk riff is enhanced and deepened by Dunn’s upright to create a foreboding reverie that reminds us why Buzzo is King.
Like all tracks on Gift of Sacrifice, “Housing, Luxury, Energy” is stripped down and raw, giving us a revelatory access to Osborne’s musical DNA. Nominally, there’s nothing here that wouldn’t be out of place on any given Melvins album, but the complexities of the composition and arrangement reminds us how deep his influences run. Add some fuzz, and this could rock harder than almost anything he’s recorded before. As is, we see the straight line between blues, folk, and metal more clearly than ever before.
This is a trend that continues throughout the whole of the album which, brief though it is at just about 35 minutes, remains as strong as anything Osborne or Dunn have ever recorded. Of particular note is the track “Science in Modern America,” in which King Buzzo’s droning vocals are backed by his sludgy guitar, which somehow manages to sound dirty despite the crispness of his acoustic, as Dunn noodles delightfully jazz-infused basslines on his upright.
As with This Machine Kills Artists, Gift of Sacrifice is a wonderful showcase of who King Buzzo is as a musician. It might not be the best entry point for someone looking to hop on the Osborne train, but it is a perfect distillation of his style and musical philosophy. The one-two punch of Buzzo and Dunn remains a powerful combination as the two play perfectly with, and against, each other to craft haunting melodies that are as great and as brilliant as anything Osborne has ever done before.
