Keith Buckley is well known in the heavy metal and hardcore music community for his brash vocals and clever lyrics in his band Every Time I Die. Buckley, a former English teacher from Buffalo, took the same dark energy that fuels the heavy sound of Every Time I Die and with his tongue in cheek literary talent he turned it into his first novel, Scale, published by Rare Bird Books. Scale is Bukowski-esque in its subject matter and tone, and despite it being fiction, you can tell this novel is a brutally introspective look into the beautifully macabre side of independent music and the hardships of leading the life of a touring musician. Sprinkled with dark humor and poignant insights into the more complex impulses and secret workings of the human brain, Scale is both funny and heartbreaking. The brilliance with which Buckley weaves between the past and present makes for rich character development of Ray Goldman and those immediately around him and helps the reader drill deep into the mechanics of Goldman’s struggles with a life of fame and the struggle to remain pure in a world that is fueled by drugs, money and sex. There was no shortage of philosophical and metaphysical points made throughout this book that will make you question the very nature of life and push you outside of your comfort zone.
— Chris Hague