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LP
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FTR 244LP
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"The last AIDS Wolf tour with Unicorn Hard On we came through Virginia. I looked in the tour book and it said, support: BUCK GOOTER. Buck what? Valerie said, 'you never heard of Buck Gooter? Man, you're in for a treat.' It was a bleak time for the music in general and the pattern was that each opening band was more horrible than the last and each promoter along the way seemed to give less and less of a fuck. Somehow, underneath this Ethiopian restaurant in Harrisonburg Virginia, I met the two gentlefolk known as Buck Gooter: Lightening Hands Billy and Terry Turtle and I've never been the same henceforth. I could see Buck Gooter being a circuit riding evangelical concern in a John Brunner near-future bummer in which weeeird pathological plutocrats run a landscape on fire and these cats show up and spell it out . . . Oh wait! That's EXACTLY how it ACTUALLY is. Never mind. 'Stainless Steel Mirrors' is the sound of Buck Gooter listening to themselves wrapped across a piece of steel. A reflection in sound crafted by none other than Don Zientara at Inner Ear Studio (he recorded the Faith/Void split lp, among . . . uh . . . others). . . . 'Dustless Grinding' sounds the closest to Laughing Hyenas anyone's come in recent memory. Billy says it's more like the 'Blue Monday' beat and that, furthermore, any band that's been around 10 plus years inevitably hits that point. . . . 'Who Put You In Charge?' This one is a neon-lit Del Shannon cyberclunk weeper. The band took out all the swear words at the last minute on this one and had to relearn the tune. Rakim, the greatest MC to ever rap, never swore once on a tune. RE SPEK. 'Waste Treatment' shows off the range in Billy's singing. Like somehow the Tornado Kid who atoms about the stage during a typical Goot performance is gonna slow down a moment and belt one out, croon for the moon, sing like the birds in Dolphy's backyard. . . . Terry and Billy will likely be buried next to each other; playing burnt Theremin lines off gruff, day-glow guitar boogies, only 'the Silent Ground' will hear. This is the way it is meant to be. But now: Here they are together alive. So you can hear" --Alexander Moskos, Montréal, March 2016. Edition of 200.
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LP
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FTR 216LP
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"Buck Gooter's First Decade is a strange anthropological skeleton detailing how a wholly millennial-American band became the musical and performative reflection of the dog-shit-smelling (chicken-meat-processing) small town in which they reside and the human-shit-smelling national underground music scene that they epitomize. It's a collection of brutal jams that's, somehow, simultaneously historic and futurist; it's punk as fuck, but endearing and folk-ridden; it's simple and concise, yet unpredictable and psychedelic. These ten songs, one from each year of the band's first decade in operation, embody the off-kilter cultural legacy of their Appalachia whilst somehow being flawlessly delivered on a vessel of pure, wholehearted industrial punk. This music transcends categorization and provides a chronological glimpse into an intensely unique project that channels the bleak and imaginative in the same stroke of pop homage and resentment. It's impossible to nail down in any traditional generalization, as it's the complete musical embodiment of two very distinct individuals, Terry Turtle and Billy Brat, who could both carry a creative torch to the moon on their own, but whom this weird fucking universe blessed us with as a masterful and perfectly balanced union. First Decade is an incredible document of true American cultural revivalism, from the creepy hypnogogic ramshackle pop hooks of the early 'Cigarats,' 'I've Got Damn Age,' and 'Spider Wings' to the morphing, angular, noise-punk gems of 'Infant Eyes,' 'Rat On!!!,' and 'Ouija Guitar,' and finally landing on the amazing, concise, terrifying brutality that has come to be their calling card of the past four years, which includes one of my all-time favorite songs, written by any band, ever: the steadfast, perfectly produced, blues-licking chill-punk anthem 'Consider the Grackles.' This record, at its core, provides an interesting perspective on how an extremely unlikely duo have come together, birthed, and continue to grow into one of the most unique and genuine bands in the world. The First Decade is fucking awesome and it made me realize how much I'm looking forward to their next" --Justin Frye, 2015. Edition of 200.
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LP
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FTR 176LP
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"On The Spider's Eyes, Buck Gooter have strapped sheets of urban post modernist metal to their bodies and weaponized themselves. The music that comes forth is a smarter and more capable predator than what the band has previously produced. It makes their last effort, Witch Molecules, seem almost friendly by comparison. The beats on The Spider's Eyes are machine-stamped, relentless. The songs themselves are reverberant sheet steel cacophonous odes to devastation. The vocals are comin' to ya straight from an abandoned factory in some lost industrial ghetto. Is Buck Gooter mad or merely telling you how it is? The Spider's Eyes could be the new Blues for those who escaped mediocrity's slaughterhouse in a century whose future went to the highest bidder almost as soon as it was ushered in less than 20 years ago. Instead of wielding the sword, on The Spider's Eyes, Buck Gooter is the sword itself, with each song, smashing themselves into a harder and denser mass upon an anvil of their own design. Billy and Turtle have set up their backline at the edge that gives way to the Abyss and did their thing. The Spider's Eyes is the result. By the time you get to the title-track at the end of the record, you are left standing alone in a vast wasteland of debris. The ride was good but the walk home will be long. Buck Gooter's early releases immediately and permanently established them as outsiders -- sure to keep squares and normals at bay. Brave and alienating like early Suicide. If you have what it takes, The Spider's Eyes could very well be the record you have been waiting for some band with the guts and hearts full of anti-matter to finally make. If not, it is a line drawn in the sand and you would be wise to step away. You will know which side you're on very quickly. The Goot will never die." --Henry Rollins, 2014; includes download code.
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