Bull of Heaven: The Band with A Discography Longer than the Universe

Music has always been a fascinating branch of art to me. Perhaps because it’s one of the few forms of art that is purely auditory with little to no visual components, or perhaps because music feels uniquely restrictive compared to other forms of art. 

You would think that music would be among the most fluid and experimental, given the vast number of sounds, instruments, and potential arrangements that exist. However, I find that few musicians ever stray from conventional compositions. Unlike other forms of art, say film, photography, or other visual arts, music is seldom held up to the same expectations of experimentation. Of course, that’s not to say there aren’t any artists who choose to take the medium beyond expected conventions. Enter Bull of Heaven.

Bull of Heaven is a Denver-based band formed in 2008 by members Clayton Counts and Neil Keener, whose work ranges from avant-garde to controversial, to just plain boring, depending on who you ask. The common criticism against Bull of Heaven is that their music, frankly, is a joke. With the majority of their music often being hours (or days, or years, or decades, or centuries, or, you know, 3.343 quindecillion years [put a pin in that, we’ll talk more about it later]) of droning sounds with almost none of the typical standards of music composition present and song titles often borrowed from, at-times rather obscure, literature, it’s probably not shocking that some have seen the band’s work as little more than a self-indulgent and grossly pretentious cluster of noise. Thankfully, I consider myself a bit of a connoisseur of pretentious art and was, therefore, very intrigued by the band.

Preliminary notes: Bull of Heaven uses an interesting method of nomenclature for their music (and rather convenient considering the massive size of their discography). 353 of their albums are titled using the following system: ### – title. Take, for instance, their first album called 001 – Weed Problem. These albums are numbered in order of release from 001 to 353. For the sake of this article, after the entire title of one of these 353 albums has been written out in full, if and/or when the album is mentioned again, it will be referred to by the three digit numerical portion of the title. For example, after 001 – Weed Problem has been referred to already, it will go on to be called 001 for the rest of the article. 002 – He Is Not Dead, but Sleepeth will turn into 002,  003 – Eleven Floors Down to 003, and so on and so forth. Moreover, Bull of Heaven has another series of 100 albums labeled with Roman numerals I to C. When the entire series of albums is referred to, as opposed to just one particular installation, it will be referred to as “roman numerals.” This same rule applies to another series of albums released by the band, the ℵ series (read as aleph), in which the albums are labeled ℵ₀ to ℵ₁₁. Lastly, the terms “album,” “project,” “song,” etc. are going to be used interchangeably, as Bull of Heaven’s music, given its very unconventional nature, is hard to define as one specific type of music. Their works are too long (and sometimes change far too much) to be considered individual songs; however, these works don’t have any type of tracklisting indicating separate songs as an album would. This article will primarily focus on the 353 numbered albums prior to member Clayton Count’s death in 2016, roman numerals, and the ℵ series. So, keep all of that in mind. 

Of course, with such a large discography that Bull of Heaven has, I have no intention of going over every album, as I’m sure that would easily take a few years, or decades even, to do (or at least doing it well would). Instead, I will be going over a few notable works, analysing what purpose these works and the band serve artistically and thematically, and giving my final impressions on Bull of Heaven to determine if they truly are a band worthy of such accusations of unseriousness and pretentiousness.

Bull of Heaven’s first work, 001 – Weed Problem, released 31 January 2026, is an almost haunting piece that introduces the dark, vacuous droning the band would go on to be most known for. But make no mistake, Bull of Heaven is nothing if not experimental; the band never truly commits to any one genre. Bull of Heaven’s discography ranges from ambient to post-rock to the occasional rock, folk, or electronic track. 

While 001 does make for a strong introduction, at least for those interested in the sort of niche the record is in, I hardly think it compares to later, more impressionable works, including the track that directly follows it: 002 – He is Not Dead, but Sleepeth. 002 is a work that is beyond words, as is much of Bull of Heaven’s work. Though if I had to define the experience of listening to this piece, I believe the word dread would best sum it up. This song, this project, this exactly 38-minute-long amalgamation of low whirrs and faint hums fills me with dread. I would be lying if I were to tell you that I still don’t hear those cold, rumbling vibrations found deep within that track as I write of it, vibrations that feel an eternity long. In a way, 002 lays down the groundwork for a common theme within Bull of Heaven’s music, and that’s permanence, or at least the impression thereof.

See, one thing that eventually would become a bit of a pattern within Bull of Heaven’s work is increasingly longer and longer pieces. The first track that would become notable for its length was 019 – Hypnosis, Drugs, and Mind Control, coming in at a total length of eight hours. 019 is a fine record. I find it to be a bit reminiscent of a previous work, 004 – Reasoning in State Hospital, in that they both have this heavily reverbed chime that reminds me of a clock; though, I find 004 to be more interesting in sound and atmosphere. Nonetheless, 019 introduced Bull of Heaven’s fascination with music of great lengths. A particularly revealing statement would be given by the band in a 2009 Q&A piece by music outlet Musique Machine (which I highly recommend reading in its entirety) regarding the lengths of their records with the band saying that “these extreme lengths are one of the last remaining unexplored territories of audio experimentation.”

Audio experimentation, indeed. Just ten tracks later, Bull of Heaven would release their next installment in incredibly long tracks, and this time it would come in at a full 24 hours long. 028 – Even to the Edge of Doom (a title likely sourced from Shakespeare‘s “Sonnet 116”) is a full day long of an eight second loop of droning, yet oddly melodic and almost ethereal, noise. There’s no easy way to describe 028. At some point in listening, the noise could no longer be registered as noise, just vibrations, waves searing themselves into the mind. It was as though my brain, despite trying to find some kind of pattern to grasp onto, some logical, musical progression, was unable to differentiate between any sounds with all of them bleeding together into an indescribable amalgamation of vibrations with no beginning or end. In a way, I feel as though I’ve developed some sort of personal attachment to this audio file, as odd as that may sound.

Bull of Heaven would continue in this direction with releases following 028. About five months after 028, the band would release another long record, 043 – He Is Cruel and Moves with Great Cunning, which had a total runtime of 13 hours, 37 minutes, and 33 seconds. Though, the lengths of 028 and 043 would pale in comparison to later records. Soon after 043, two releases later, the band came out with 045 – The Wicked Cease from Struggling, an album exactly one week long, lasting 168 hours. Following 045, in the late spring of 2009, Bull of Heaven would take a detour from the numbered releases and begin the roman numerals series with tracks labeled I through C. September of 2009, the band would start their ℵ (aleph) series, another form of audio experimentation as each installment would contain thousands of pieces within it. In fact,  ℵ₁₀ and ℵ₁₁  would contain millions. Though, do note that these pieces were primarily composed of ambient droning and white noise.

2010 would mark further adventures into the realm of extremely long tracks with Counts in particular taking an interest in a Longplayer concept, a composition made by musician Jem Finer with an intended duration of 1,000 years as it was started on 31 December 1999 and is intended to end 31 December 2999 with no repetition. In fact, this pursuit for making the longest music possible would later be described as an obsession by his bandmate, Keener. 208 – As You Etch on the Inner Window of your Eye (916 hours, 35 minutes, and 12 seconds), 209 – Blurred with Tears and Suffering Beyond Hope (4,723 hours, 54 minutes, and 37 seconds), and finally 210 – Like a Wall in Which an Insect Lives and Gnaws (a whopping 50, 000 hours) would gain some in some traction on online forums for their incredible lengths. Tracks 243 through 260 would also pique some interest as they each progressively build upon a formula using the least common multiple (lcm) of prime numbers, stretching the audio out further until reaching the final formula as seen in the title of 260 – lcm(2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29,31,37,41,43,47,53,59,61,67,71,73,79,83) which is 8,468,560,238.75 years long. Though, even this track would be dwarfed by later releases in 2014: 302 – It Is Part of Space and Time with a length of 86, 300, 000, 000 years, 303 – n(k) at 9,966, 000, 000, 000 years, 304 – 0(2^18×5^18) at 3, 345, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 years, 307 – x0(2^18×5^18)p at 3, 343, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 years, 308 – Px0(2^18×5^18)p*k at 3, 343, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 years, 309 – ΣPx0(2^18x^5^18)p*k*k at 3, 343, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 years, and lastly, but certainly not least, 310 – ΩΣPx0(2^18x^5^18)p*k*k*k at an incredible and absurd length of 3, 343, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 years, or 3.343 * 10⁴⁸ in short scale scientific notation, or, even more simply, 3.343 quindecillion years. Needless to say, 310 is Bull of Heaven’s longest, most discussed, and most controversial release to date. If you’re wondering how such an album can even be created and downloaded without obliterating computer storage, allow me to explain.

310 is essentially composed of thousands of ZIP files nestled into other ZIP files like a little matryoshka doll of seemingly never-ending, hyper-compressed ZIP files that total out to around 401 MB. Each file contains about 29 hours of what amounts to a looped one-second long bass pulse. When all the files are added up, you get that ridiculous 3.343 quindecillion number. That’s it. That’s all 310 is. Ironically, and rather humorously, the record following 310 would be one of the band’s shortest at only a little over a minute in length: 311 – Night’s Great Perimeter. An interesting thing to note within these exorbitantly long releases in particular is that they usually have bull imagery on their covers, as if these releases are to be taken as a representation of the band itself. However, the release of 310 would be one of the last releases put out by the band that would be of such incredible length. 

Bull of Heaven continued their numbered series of albums up until the 2016 release of 353: To Fill the Mouth of Their Monster. On 22 November 2016,  Counts would suffer an opiate overdose after having been prescribed them to manage pain he had sustained from a car accident the year before. Counts was reportedly quite the character, known by his friends and bandmates for his eccentric personality. In fact, upon doing more research on him for this article, I discovered a pretty funny story in which Counts made himself  a bit famous, or perhaps infamous, while he was living in Austin, Texas in the 90s after regularly prank calling Alex Jones’ (yes, as in the far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones) public access radio show he had at the time. He would even go on to get into an actual physical altercation with him, resulting in Jones falsely accusing Counts of being a terrorist and possessing child pornograpy to the FBI.  So, it should come as no surprise that it was believed by his friends that Counts had faked his death as another one of his many pranks, especially since that was something he had actually done before. Unfortunately, this was not the case. At the age of 43, Counts, who had managed to create various music projects longer than the existence of humanity and the age of the universe itself, had died.

Following Counts’ death, Bull of Heaven went on a hiatus for a few years until Keener began releasing new works under the Bull of Heaven moniker in 2018. However, there has certainly been a difference in style as the numerical method of nomenclature, obscenely long drone works, band logo, and general feel of the band have been discarded. Don’t get me wrong, the new works of Bull of Heaven are not bad. They’ve seemed to have taken on a more electronic direction with some projects, which I’m not opposed to. The music is certainly more accessible than before with the new releases under Keener having been uploaded to streaming services like Spotify. But to say that the current Bull of Heaven still has that same atmosphere of the Bull of Heaven with Clayton Counts in it would be wrong. Hence why for the purposes of this article, I chose to focus on the band before Counts’ passing, as I feel something distinctly different that was present in the band that left alongside Counts. 

I suppose now would be the time to answer the question you probably have, or at least, it’s the question that I was left with: why?

There’s a lot of interesting ideas found within Bull of Heaven’s work. As a purely artistic, experimental venture, tracks like 208, 209, 210, 260, 302, 310, etc. raise a fascinating question: what even is music? When does music cease to be music? Is an eight second recording of sound considered music? How about if you were to take those eight seconds and repeat it for 40 minutes? 40 hours? 40 days? 40 decades? 40 centuries? Can one note make a song if it’s long enough? What can music, when treated like a true medium of art, be? Truth be told, I don’t believe Bull of Heaven‘s music is intended to be enjoyed, so much as it intended to be simply experienced. Some works are enjoyable, sure. I actually enjoy the repeated, eerie, piano-esque noises of 208. It grows on you after a while, if you can believe that (though, admittedly, I would not listen to 916 hours of it). However, I highly doubt the 3.343 quindecillion-year-long repeated pulsing of 310 is meant to be “enjoyed” in the traditional sense of music. Though, I suppose that’s the point. This is not music in the “traditional sense.” This is music in a purely artistic sense. It’s bending and breaking audio to its limits. It’s absolutely whatever you make of it. There’s no chorus to these works, nor bridge, nor verse. It’s just noise, truly. Yet, somehow, these albums have left just as much of an impact, if not more, on me than any other traditional song or album that’s left its mark on me. 310, the audio mp3, is not the actual focal point here. 310, the album that will last longer than humanity’s existence and then some more and what that means to you, is what the real art is. There’s another statement that Bull of Heaven made in their interview with Machine Musique that I’d like to share; I think it offers a lot of insight as to what Bull of Heaven is: “We’re not in the business of changing minds, we only want to help free them from imaginary boundaries with respect to what art should or shouldn’t be. We really don’t have such cynical views of music, and we enjoy what we do.”

Some might say that’s pretentious, echoing the criticisms I mentioned earlier, but I don’t truly see Bull of Heaven in that light. For one thing, this band is far too self-aware to be pretentious. If we are to take the very literal definition of pretentious from the Oxford English Dictionary, “attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed,” then I don’t think that Bull of Heaven fits this description. The band never tries to be anything more than what it is: two guys making noise. And they have a sense of humor about it. Following one of their longer projects, 287 – n, which was roughly 87 trillion hours long, is 288 – Four Years Ago? Opium. A work only a little over three minutes long, consisting of a catchy, hip-hop track that’s just so silly. That’s really the best way to describe hearing this track after listening to even the shortened version of the record that precedes it, which is still seven hours long: silly. There’s even another project of theirs that I find pretty endearing, that project being 300 – Songs for Girls. 300 is primarily composed of fan-made submissions as well as a few tracks from the band. It’s perhaps the closest Bull of Heaven ever got to a traditional album. The record is incredibly inconsistent, but it has this almost whimsical charm to it that compensates for some of the dips in quality. The first song on it is also rather catchy. Another reason I hesitate to label Bull of Heaven as pretentious is that the band members do genuinely have some talent. 

While I’ve largely made out Bull of Heaven to be this highly avant-garde, fringe, and niche band that hardly anyone could get into, there’s actually quite a few tracks that show the true sense of musicianship Counts and Keener had together. Records such as 005- A Lovely Pear, 056 – Return of Ghost Sheriff (Werewolves are Chasing Me), and especially 111 – Superstring Theory Verified are all genuinely good standalone pieces, no philosophical probing into the nature of art and music needed. 005 is a lovely release with a very calming acoustic guitar and nature sounds accompanying it alongside a spoken word segment in the intro; 056 has the sound of a stereotypical “cowboy” style track that would play in an old spaghetti Western film but with an almost eerie sounding reverb added onto it; and 111 is easily the best piece Bull of Heaven has ever made with some of the coolest sounding guitar work I’ve heard from the band and vaguely reminiscent of Swans. Bull of Heaven has true musical talent and can make music beyond the one-note experiments they’ve become somewhat infamous for. 

Ultimately, Bull of Heaven is an interesting band, a good band even. They have interesting ideas, compositions, and means of expressing their talent. Now, would I personally recommend Bull of Heaven? That’s a rather difficult question. This is definitely not a band I would casually listen to; there’s a pretty high bar of entry for your typical listener. (Insert some comparison to film here) Though, that high bar is more so found in the music itself than in its availability. In fact, most of Bull of Heaven’s music can be found and downloaded via their website bullofheaven.com. For those interested enough to check out this band, which I highly recommend if you have the attention span, time, and curiosity, here are some recommendations that are more accessible (and pretty good):

005 – A Lovely Pear

014 – Upon One Pair of English Legs

056 – Return of Ghost Sheriff (Werewolves are Chasing Me)

077 – The End of the World Must Be Coming

108 – Did You Know That the Bible Have the Answers? 

111 – Superstring Theory Verified

138 – You Feel a Stillness All Around You, Caressing Your Face

205 – Of What Far Sea Upon What Unknown Ground

206 – Like Waters Flowing in the River’s Course

207 – I Watched You Enter Your Home from Inside a Dumpster

288 – Four Years Ago? Opium.

292 – Human Dignity in Times of Great Suffering and Loss

299 – Self-Traitor, I Do Bring the Spider Love

300 – Songs for Girls

321 – Burn Dark Sincere Receiver

326 – I Hope You Feel the Hopelessness

329 – She is as the Nights are Horrible, Pt. 1

333 – Of Course, the Personality is Gone

I

XIV 

C

And here are some longer and/or more out there tracks that I’d recommend to the more ambitious:

002 – He is Not Dead, but Sleepeth

004 – Reasoning in State Hospital

005 – The Myth of Dinosaurs

013 – Elsa, Are You in There?

018 – Candles Green, Heads and Skulls

028 – Even to the Edge of Doom

029 – Lions on a Banner

053 – La Tristesse Durera Toujours 

105 – I’m Not Here Anymore

130 – A Slow and Painful Execution

134 – Lingering Under the Remainder of Her Disease

149 – Still in My Thought That Lovely Image Breathes

208 – As You Etch on the Inner Window of Your Eye (Note: I would highly recommend listening to the excerpts of this track and longer tracks like it on the band’s site as opposed to listening to all 916 hours, which I’m sure would be fairly difficult for the average person.)