I make no bones about the fact that not only am I huge fan of Buzzard, but also of its genius madmen creator, Christopher Thomas Elliott, whether he is under this guise or his alter ego, Satiricus Doomicus Americus.

I’m convinced that the man is one of the greatest satrical/political writers of our time, who refuses to watch the world burn as he buries his head in the sand like the rest of us, but instead levels a lyrical and musical finger at the woes of the world and tries to bring justice to the injustices he sees all around him.

Y’know, like Bob Dylan used to. When he was good. Before the coke bloat and whatever that shit was he did after Blood on The Tracks until… *checks watch*… ah yes, now.

So, when I got the obligatory 100 million Bandcamp new release emails that I seem to get every morning and I noticed that Buzzard had released a new single, Crushing Burden of Despair, ahead of the second album, Mean Bone, I dropped everything I was doing and rushed off to see if this mad bastard was about to hit even more gold dust.

So… no pressure then.

Unsurprisingly, Crushing Burden of Despair is a banger of a tune. Christopher Thomas Elliott is continually evolving and perfecting Buzzard’s Doom Folk style and here he delivers a song that is as lyrically sharp as a Katana sword and as musically funky as Sly and The Family Stone having a drinking competition with Parliament, and I’m not just using clever metaphors or comparisons here.

There is a groove to this record that will have you bopping away quite merrily while the words paint a picture of a society that is crumbling to ash as it worships false prophets and Gods. It is such a contrast, the outrageous soul that meets the end of the world, that in lesser hands it would fail miserably, but Buzzard nails it so hard to the board that that fucker is never coming down.

I also love how it feels as much as I Iove how it sounds. It gets you in the guts like a sucker punch from Usyk. It’s a swift right cross of musical rhythm that you don’t see coming and as you’re falling to your knees it catches you under your chin with a perfect uppercut of vocalization and twisted words.

Quite fankly, it’s a knockout blow that you don’t mind taking and one that the rest of the world needs to hear, and if the rest of Mean Bone is, as I fully suspect, anywhere near this good, then 2025 should be The Year of The Buzzard.

Head on over to the Buzzard Bandcamp page and check it out for yourself.