Virtuoso guitarist Brian "Buckethead" Carroll, born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, debuted in the Deli Creeps (same scene as Mr Bungle Primus), was discovered in New York by avantgarde composer John Zorn and by producer Bill Laswell, who employed him on Transmutation. The legend grew rapidly both on the musical level (sessions for Henry Kaiser, Will Ackerman, Jonas Hellborg, Bootsy Collins, Jon Hassell, Derek Bailey) and on the histrionic level (Buckethead performs masked).

His first cassette album, Giant Robot (1991 - Japan, 1994 - CyberOctave, 2000), a 73-minute juggernaut, was a menacing sci-fi concept featuring Bill Laswell and funk guru Bootsy Collins. The album's semi-comic fusion of heavy metal, funk and psychedelia yielded the catchy heavy-metal themes of Welcome to Bucketheadland and Binge and Grab, the clownish vaudeville of Want Some Slaw, the truculent fantasies of I Come In Peace and Buckethead's Chamber of Horrors, the funk ballets of Aquabot, Buckethead's Toy Store, a glorious sendup of Primus in Robot Transmission, and even an orchestral interlude, I Love My Parents.

The double album Bucketheadland (Disk Union, 1992) is another concept work, one that indulges in fashionable themes such as virtual reality and cyberpunk (Park Theme). His guitar playing is the most possessed since Hendrix’s time, not only virtuosic and unrestrained, but also capable of sophisticated passages and eclectic like few others (jazz-rock, heavy metal, blues-rock). The second disc contains dance-oriented remixes.

Dreamatorium (Strata, 1994), credited to Death Cube K, unleashes the horrifying drones of Maps Of Impossible Worlds, the industrial atonality of Terror By Night, and the gruesome nightmares of Dark Hood, Maggot Dream, and Land Of The Lost.

The sounds are still extreme on Day Of The Robot (Submeta, 1996), which contains five long tracks instead of the usual chaos of songs and spoken bits. The first piece, Destroyer (12 minutes), picks up where he left off: hammering grindcore. After a few minutes of 360-degree machine-gun fire, the galactic glissandos of a dreamlike melody begin to stride forward like a tank. It is like listening to Helloween confronted by Helios Creed (but the last three minutes are quiet ambient music, guitar hums and gusts of rhythm).
Fying Guillotine however immediately changes the landscape: the neurotic bursts of riffs are sampled into the house rhythms of a disc jockey. The goal becomes to marry Buckethead’s furious solos with the bodily polyrhythms of the DJ; in short, to fuse heavy metal and jungle. Their duets are spectacular in Collision and Caution Drop, which recall certain sarabandes for guitar and drums in free-jazz (and the latter also overflows with magical guitar sounds, just two millimeters away from the most drug-soaked Jimi Hendrix); but Quantum Crash is simply a drum’n’bass track.

Continuing down that path, Buckethead formed El Stew with three disc jockeys.

Colma (Cyber Octave, 1998) is his "ambient" record. Aided by drummer Brain of Primus and by a "Scratch Picklz" on turntables, Buckethead paints languid (and mainly acoustic) soundscapes soaked with psychedelic and exotic laziness (Big Sur Moon, Whitewash, Machete).

Devil Dub (Black Hole, 1998), recorded as Ben Wa, is a surreal immersion in the world of dub and voodoo. I Need Five Minutes Alone (Avant, 1998), recorded as Pieces, is Buckethead and Brain and a singer playing avant-soul.

The line-up for Monsters And Robots (Cyber Octave, 1999) features Primus' Les Claypool on bass, Brain on drums and Bootsy Collins on vocals. The guitarist roams through self-mythologized self-referential territory (The Ballad Of Buckethead, The Shape vs Bucket, Jump Man, Revenge Of The Double Man) and a few humorous jams (Nun Chuka Kata) and eventually pens yet another futuristic concept while concocting the most unlikely and perverted mixture of funk, jazz, heavy metal, electronica, hip hop and dub. While he has mitigated the high-octane style of the beginnings, the guitarist is still a monument of self-glorification and excesses. Buckethead is a virtual reality where Todd Rundgren and George Clinton are the same person, and where the Mahavishnu Orchestra and the Mothers of Invention play the same music.

Buckethead joined Guns N' Roses in 2000, but left in 2004.

On Somewhere Over The Slaughterhouse (Stray, 2001) Buckethead goes techno and the results are surprisingly entertaining. The album is a display of guitar skills, with an exuberance of hooks, licks, distortions, glissandos and the likes, but at the same time it follows a perverted dance-club logic, relying on steady and catchy beats.

Bermuda Triangle (Catalyst, 2002), a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Extrakd, was a stylistic hodgepodge that perhaps aims at summarizing Buckethead's career. Electric Tears (2002) was an unusual soft-rock excursion. Funnel Weaver (2002) contained 49 brief instrumentals.

Thanatopsis (2001) was a prog-rock trio of sorts with keyboardist Travis Dickerson and drummer Ramy Antoun, that also recorded Axiology. Population Override (Guitar Nine, 2002) and Gorgone (2005) were collaborations with keyboardist Travis Dickerson and Bucketheadland 2 (2003) was a terrible follow-up to his classic.

However, among so much junk, the instrumental albums Cuckoo Clocks Of Hell (Guitar Nine, 2004) and Island Of Lost Minds (2004) were concentrates of his power-metal vision.

Enter the Chicken (Serjical Strike, 2005), the first solo since Buckethead left Guns'N Roses, was a collection of stereotypes of contemporary metal, featuring guest vocalists and highlighted by virtuoso guitar. We Are One, Botnus, The Hand and Funbus survey the field with ferocious determination. Unfortunately, Buckethead loses concentration on a few tracks, carried away, as usual, by his eccentric sense of humour.

Kaleidoscalp (Tzadik, 2006) is a showcase of Buckethead's explosive avant-metal guitar (frequently reminiscent of latter-day Frank Zappa) and sounds like the continuation of Cuckoo Clocks Of Hell, except with better material to work on (Frakenseuss Laboratories, Music Box Innards, The Slunk The Cutter and the Candlestick Maker).

Inbred Mountain (2005) was a limited-edition collection of left-overs.

Few musicians have been as wildly inconsistent as Brian "Buckethead" Carroll.