The Fuzztones Buried Treasure Review
The Fuzztones
Buried Treasure
Cleopatra Records
2025
Dig deep enough into the dirt of Garage Rock history, and eventually you’re gonna hit something radioactive. That’s what The Fuzztones “Buried Treasure” feels like, not just an album, but a grave robbery of fuzz-drenched gold. It’s the Fuzztones doing what they’ve always done best: exhuming the bones of 60’s garage and injecting it with a jolt of sleazy psych energy until it twitches back to life.
The record plays like a creepy old Horror movie with an organ howling like an old church gone to ruin, guitars crackling with the kind of distortion that smells of witchery and regret. There’s a sense of celebration in the decay.
What makes “Buried Treasure” so damn fun is that it’s both familiar and filthy. The songs breathe that classic Rudi Protrudi swagger, sharp, dangerous, tongue firmly in cheek, but there’s a looseness to it, like the band isn’t just revisiting their past but reveling in it. You can practically see the dust cloud rising from the tape reels, the ghosts of fuzz pedals past echoing in every riff.
The organ leads slither like a psychedelic snake, and the guitar tones sound like they were dragged through a swamp of reverb and voodoo. Vocally, Rudi is still the ringleader of this carnival of sleaze half preacher, half graveyard ghoul, totally in command of the chaos.
This isn’t some slick modern remastering job or an attempt to recapture long-lost glory; it’s more like a secret story that’s finally seeing daylight. “Buried Treasure” feels like the soundtrack to a midnight dive-bar ritual, where the spirits of The Sonics, The Seeds, and The Cramps come together and make plans to take over the world while downing cheap beer and working on broken amps.
At its core, this is pure, uncut Fuzztones, gritty, greasy, and gloriously undead. They’ve unearthed something raw and primal here, proof that even after decades in the graveyard of Rock ‘N’ Roll, the band’s bite is still venomous and mean! While I don’t consider the band to be traditionally Horror related, this album has quickly become a staple for Halloween season, there’s an oldschool spooky feeling attached to it.
Stand outs – “69 (Strychnine)”, “Barking up the wrong Tree”, “She’s Wicked” and “One Night Stand”.