Predictability is underrated. Just about every band we love eventually undergoes a transformation-- sometimes it excites us, sometimes it pisses us off. And when a band covers the same ground repeatedly on their first few albums, sometimes that's a blessing, especially if what they were doing on their debut was invigorating right out the gate. The Budos Band are one of those groups. Their 2005 debut plied a particularly up-front take on retro funk, one that compacted Afrobeat, Latin soul, and James Brown into brief but highly danceable instrumentals. So did their second album. And so does their third. You could throw The Budos Band III in with the band's previous two LPs-- titled, with a convenient uniformity, The Budos Band and The Budos Band II-- and come up with 32 songs that all sound like they could have been cut in the same session.
Fortunately, that theoretical session makes up one of the more ferocious bodies of old-school funk revivalism in the last few years. Maybe it's the stark imagery of their album artwork at play here-- this is their second sleeve in a row featuring a creature name-checked in Five Deadly Venoms-- but the Budos' music often has this undercurrent of cinematic martial artistry to it. They keep everything tight, showing brutal knockout efficiency that thrives on limber call-and-response riffs and unceasing percussive motion. If you're out walking and you throw on a cut like "Unbroken, Unshaven" or "Golden Dunes" you'll find yourself stepping up your pace to meet it. And then you might find yourself wanting to do something with your hands-- attempting to punch through marble, for instance, or carrying 50-pound jugs of water up six flights of stairs. This is a band so tight and in tune that they've basically become this telepathically-communicating instrumental hydra that ambushes you into moving your body on its terms.
It's a fine balance between playing to your strengths and recklessly charging ahead on familiar instinct. A couple of tracks wind up sounding like vague rewrites; "Nature's Wrath" in particular has a marked melodic similarity to The Budos Band II highlight "Origin of Man". But other times, they come up with something even more interesting when they go back to their idea well. There was an inside-out twist of the Temptations' "My Girl" on II that turned a breezy love song into a minor-chord skulk that rode on tension, moodiness, and implicit jealously (hence the new title-- "His Girl"). Here, they pull the same stunt with "Reppirt Yad" (read it backwards), though turning circa-1965 Beatles into weaselly, blade-flashing kingpin theme music makes for a tweak that's both kind of funny and completely badass.
Besides, what would you change in a sound like this? Sure, it'd be interesting to hear the Budos push their terse jams further toward the eight-minute mark. And saxophonist Jared Tankel's admission that the band's initial intent was to make a "psychedelic, doom-rock record" hints at something stealthily metallic lurking under the surface; imagine these guys adapting their approach to something in the vein of King Crimson's "Red" or Hawkwind's "7 By 7". ("Black Venom" is a hell of a hint; once you find out it was partially inspired by and named after Black Sabbath and Venom-- their trumpeter's idea!-- it's almost impossible not to hear the metal in it.) Still, this is one of those cases where you'll like this album if you liked the last one, and for all the same reasons, so long as you're willing to forgive the occasional bout of déjà vu. This album's predictability isn't the same thing as complacency, and if this music catches you unawares, it'll strike you right where you're vulnerable.
