Arqum Iqbal ~ H&Q Featuring Arqum Iqbal (album review) ... Taking a musical holiday in the sun!

Style: heavy metal, prog metal
Label: Imperial Suqre Music Studios
Year: 2011
Home: California

Members: Arqum Iqbal ~ guitar
Joe Rullo ~ drums

British born guitarist AI has previously released an album called Controlled Chaos. Sadly, chaos seems to be a key into how he presents himself & his music ... which impacts how I do my work & represent his music to my readers. The problem is that this review ends up becoming more of an education on what not to do & less of an endorsement. This sometimes happens as I follow the rule of first impressions as a guide post on what I free form. For a guitarist who blogs regularly about the recording process of H&Q Feat AI, particularly the single "Destroyer" which oddly belongs to the aforementioned album, there's a general lack of information on his website & on the album itself, such as who plays on it or even that one of the songs is a cover of the Sex Pistols. With legal royalty requirements as they are one expects at least songwriting credits to concerned parties. Though, nobody gets any songwriting credits here in AI's chaos, so there might be other covers I'm not familiar with. Yeah, it reads that AI was born in England, is inspired by Joe Satriani & Steve Vai - though you won't hear anything like either of them from the fingers of AI & what guitarist isn't on some level - & has put out numerous solo albums, but no where will you find the name of who is singing on this album & the drummer only gets mentioned in some blog photos by first name, while AI's own biography isn't even updated to include any mention of this new release ... though it does share both the unneeded original album cover art & the final far cooler version. Further, the name of the album itself is confusing. Is this an AI solo album or is it a new band called H&Q, that seems to be duo not a band, with the name of the album being Feat AI? Or, is H&Q Feat AI the name of the album, in which case who puts their own name as "featured" on an album & leaves off the name of the artist? Okay, the New Yardbirds released their first album with only the name of the album Led Zeppelin printed on it, but that was a mistake & it's not like it was Led Zeppelin Feat The New Yardbirds. Just look at the cover art here to see if you don't agree that it looks as if H&Q is the name of the band & Feat AI the name of the album, even though from what I can gather this is an AI solo album. What's more confusing is that "H&Q" is a song on Controlled Chaos ... right next to "Destroyer". Controlled chaos is the self-fulfilling prophecy here ... leading me to yet again recommend that some musicians not do everything themselves. I intend to best represent musicians on this blog. I avoid outright ripping artists apart on this blog, which some music critics love to do to show off their literary prowess to some nameless editor out there. I publish my own books & am here to share music that is different & interesting, not show off. I don't even care if this is my best writing. It's about the artist not me. Though, I do have things I look for in a band. Not everything gets written about. Some bands aren't interesting & others just don't interest me. If I can't say something positive to balance the negative I won't write, unless being shit is the goal of the band. Other times, like now, I find myself being more detrimental than I prefer to be & it hurts me to do so, but I feel there's such a thing as an educational reviewer. Learn from the mistakes of others & let me show you what this third party is seeing. I'm happy you think your music is the greatest on earth, but remember every band says that. That means nothing to me & neither does it mean anything to most reviewers so I'm not looking at your PR. I could whitewash over the mistakes that pop out at me, but that does nothing for the listener who may feel I've given a bad recommendation, nor does it do anything for fellow musicians reading this. I should ignore one's website, but when the CD was sent with no one-sheet or letter & doesn't have a lot of information I have no place else to go. I give my apologies alongside my philosophy. Those who read these reviews know that I research a bit of my artists & share additional information in my reviews to paint a better or bigger context. Sometimes I think it's important, sometimes its not. Yes, I can probably write to AI looking for some clarification, but how many people on itunes are going to write asking who is who? None. Some won't care, but more often than not if you hear a singer on an album you like you want to know who it is, or maybe you want to get into your favorite guitarist & find out more about their recording output. I should be able to find all this out without any strenuous research. Yeah, yeah, it's all about marketing. It has nothing to do with music. I know, I'm a musician myself outside of a businessman & reviewer. & no blogging doesn't fulfill all marketing goals ... it's just one PR tool. I know that updating a website takes time. I often get behind on mine, but I often go through it making sure it's accurate & has all the information everyone needs in addition to advertising all my stuff. Let alone, I'm also adamant about giving credit where it's due & I pay all royalties. That overly winded diatribe being said its about time I talk about the music ... but at least we should all be on the same page now. I'm sorry, but I return again to chaos. A little more control would be helpful. Here I mean the word control in terms of focus. The best part of the album is not that which I expect AI wants the listener to focus on, while the distractions are what he says is his forte. I mean, the best part of the album is the unnamed vocalist while the least interesting is the guitar playing. Maybe they are both AI. I don't know. I can't find any pictures on the blog of a vocalist so it must be AI. Inspiration Steve Vai is amazing for his emotional prowess on the guitar. It cries, sings & haunts. It doesn't just riff, riff, riff. It's about emotion not a flurry of wild notes. AI seems to follow the belief that a flurry of notes is enjoyable. It's really not. A riff may make a song's foundation, but a feeling behind the riff makes the song something special. Most great riffs, whoever the band, that have gone down in history have an emotion behind them. Anyone can fly on the fretboard with practice, but I'm reminded of former guitar teacher Al Pitrelli who often said make it melodic. AI also counts Marty Friedman, Al's predecessor in Megadeth, as an inspiration. AI is as angular as Marty, but Megadeth also has powerhouse difficult rhythms that are missing here. While lacking in texture AI also has no subtlety. He's just plays without direction trying to showoff. The guitar is often thrust upon the songs instead of driving it. Perhaps this is predicted in the opener "Holidays In The Sun" by the Sex Pistols. I'll confess I'm not a fan of the Sex Pistols & don't even know most of their stuff, but this sounded so much like them I looked it up & discovered it is actually their song. I'm glad I did as my original draft of this blog mentioned how he sounds like that. How embarrassing that would be for me! Here it's sans the sloppiness with lots of wild guitar, but what guitarist wants to show off by covering a band not known for its instrumental prowess? Few musicians have covered the Sex Pistols with any real success in my book. Sadly, the best part of this song is the singer, which reminds me of a rougher Jon Oliva making it better than the Sex Pistols could ever sound. Overall, the highlight of the album is the vocals without doubt. More than a few songs actually sound like Jon Oliva's Savatage during its primal days Sirens days (for example, "Into The Fire"). The two highlights of the album are the acoustic "Right Direction" & the similar "Tired Scene". The solos are taken on acoustic guitar, which, due to the nature of the instrument, reign in AI's excess & provide some missing focus let alone being really cool. The overdubbed electric solos later in the songs pale in comparison. Check out the brief disjointed acoustic solo at the beginning "Tired Scene" for example, compared to the ending electric solo with more than its share of awkward notes. I would have done the whole album like this, but at this point I've already given too much advice for anyone's good.

The Kalling ~ Evil Kalling You (album review) ... Listen in & pay attention!

Style: death metal, heavy metal
Label: self-released
Year: 2011
Home: Texas

Members: Bryan 'B-Ray' Ray ~ guitars/vocals
Gerald 'G-Man' Barnett ~ drums

The Kalling's debut A World To Come was a low-fi death metal stomp I previously described as what might be created by the ghost of Aleister Crowley or dredged out of the Loch Ness. This is the lost alternative soundtrack to Kenneth Anger's film Lucifer Rising, not the mushy instrumental about to be formally released by Jimmy Page ... which Anger heard & refused. The Kalling comes just a few decades too late to be of service. The creatively titled Evil Kalling You was released within a few months of A World To Come, attesting to the the high creativity & energy of the union of two old hand musicians ... let alone the fact the Kalling's recordings come a decade after their formation & they've had lots of rehearsal time. Evil Kalling You doesn't diverge too much from its predecessor with thick chunky rhythms at Black Sabbath speed over a drum beat that at times seems to be the main catalyst of forward movement with lots of little touches, with vocals growled, spoken & whispered over it all. While the debut was a concept album of the apocalypse, with the highlight being the haunting eight minute "Death March" that's exactly how its sounds & a metal dirge if there ever one was, Evil Kalling You is not so much a sequel but now a turn from the physical landscape to the psychological one with a romp through inner demons (i.e. "Internal Meltdown", "Evil Kalling You"), the devil (i.e. "Right Hand Of The Devil") & pain & misery. While the first album was full of sound effects and lots of backing vocals, this takes a much more basic approach, though there is a lot of vocal experimentation (i.e. "Internal Meltdown", "Right Hand Of The Devil") just sans the backing vocals. Though the sound effects were a nice touch & particularly lent themselves to the apocalyptical theme, their loss here gives this its own feeling. The sound of the mind is a slow sparse crawl. The mind might be a cluttered world but deep inside it's a lonely beast. The only real problem is the low-fi quality doesn't have the vocals as upfront as they could be making some of the lines difficult to hear. & there is also a bit of monotony on a few songs that seem to drag (i.e. "Blood Red", "Deadly Storm", "Open Your Eyes"), the irony being that these are the apocalyptical songs which have more in common with the themes of A World To Come & feel like tracks from those sessions ... so remove them & what remains is a strong concept EP album of inner turmoil, even with an instrumental in "Rebirth" as a moment of strange silence.

Vis Vires ~ Inside The Hate (album review) ... And, inside the music!

Style: heavy metal, progressive, alt rock
Label: self-released
Year: 2005
Home: Atlanta, Georgia

Members: Alexi Aleister ~ vocals/guitar
Lee ~ bass/b. vocals
Willy Bolander ~ guitar/b. vocals
Chad Gilbert ~ drums

There's a mix of bands in VV strung together with power guitar arpeggios against aggressive double bass drumming plus an array of quirky vocals common to current alt rock bands in an age where quirkiness is becoming the vocal norm. It's almost as if a couple puzzles were dropped & now the differing pieces are being pushed together to create a new, albeit strange, puzzle. A single song will go from fast to slow which each part colliding into each other, or maybe veering away, so it's hard to say which instrument is pushing the music forward. Sometimes it feels like there's a couple songs smashed together clumsily, as when the drums are fast while the guitars are slow ... & then there's the everything but metal lyrics. There's a bit of Deathstars-esque gothic darkness in the lyrics & backing vocals, some New Wave style in the lead vocals that would be quite comfortable in the eary 80's, a bit of wannabe Berkeley guitar & a bit of punk shouting. But, yet, it's more than just a conglomeration. There's actually quite a personality coming through. It's some of the most personality I've heard in an alt rock-ish release in awhile. It's most obvious in the vocals, which pull from a heritage that could be linked to the Cardiacs or a less moody HIM, that are given a boost with an array of contrasting backing vocals including growling & shouting. Though I usually find self-press to be too glamorous, which its of course supposed to be, I can't help but find VV's description of themselves interesting: "Fast-paced hatred & grief turned beautiful metal with expressive singing, devilish screaming, & solos that slay dragons." I'm not too sure about the dragon slaying, but the rest of it is certainly on target. Expressive singing & lots of grief tucked within the mix are definite. Though, it's not as heavy musically as I was prone to expect, even when the drums are going full blast or the guitar blazing away. There's too much contrast within a song to let it ever go too heavy as there's not enough time before some new sound comes along. I don't want to say that's a schizophrenic feeling to the music, but there is a chaotic appeal as VV doesn't let you rest long with repetition. It's almost a bit too much at times & could at times do with a break from the high speed stir setting. Inside The Hate is the only release by VV. A second release was begun but never completed before their break-up. It's a shame, as there's lots of great ideas at work here.

Travers & Appice Featuring T.M. Stevens ~ Live At The House Of Blues (DVD review) ... Do you think they're sexy?

Style: hard rock, blues-rock
Label: Fuel Label
Year: 2010
Home: n/a

Concert location: House of Blues, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Year Recorded: 2010
Length: 60 minutes
Bonus Features: pre-show interview with Pat Travers & Carmine Appice; gallery slide show with T.M. Stevens voiceover

Members: Carmine Appice ~ drums/vocals
Pat Travers ~ guitar/vocals
T.M. Stevens ~ bass/b. vocals

Originally planned to be Derringer/Appice following the Derringer, Bogert, Appice album scheduling problems prevented that union so to fulfill contractual obligations in stepped Canadian blues-rock guitarist Pat Travers who had previously jammed with legendary drummer Carmine Appice at a NAMM music conference show. The partnership proved positive resulting in It Takes A Lot Of Ball that featured a 70's-esque sound of rock drums & thick guitar playing. African-American funkmaster T.M. Stevens contributed bass to a track. Going on tour on the eve of their follow-up the three reunited again. This DVD, also available on a CD/DVD combo under the name Keep On Rocking!, was one of the first gigs. In many ways it might be a good introduction to all three folks individually, in addition to T&A. There's no flashing lights, no special effects, no flash ... its all about the music. Its so modest that one might forget that T.M. Stevens is the new boy in the group of a career that .. only .. goes back to playing in James Brown's band & that the guys behind him include a Canadian legend & the man that created the first drum clinic. This is really very straight ahead 70's feeling rock driven by Traver's blazing guitar going through an array of blues-inspired riffs & singing most of the lead vocals. Travers is a far better rhythm player as his solos, here at least, seem to lack individuality. Appice keeps the beat steady but at the same time somewhat surprisingly reserved for someone of his stature with few solos, while singing a few songs in a surprising high tenor for someone of his physical ruggedness. Stevens, by far the most flashy of any of them in every way, contributes straight ahead basslines that probably does him the least amount of justice of the trio, as those familiar with his work will feels he's under-utilized ... made obvious by a bass/vocal only rendition of his "Turn Me On", co-written by Al Pitrelli of Megadeth/Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Here Stevens shows us what makes him so funky & what he can do & what the Stevens experience is all about by singing his solo like George Winston but throwing in some wah-wah effects on his bass, along with a lot of fascinating finger movements. On some level it feels like the climax of the show as its full of surprises, let alone being one of the most unique bass solos one will hear ... though normal for Stevens. Turn up the volume & check-out Stevens bass in the mix during the concert. He might be limited in chord progressions but he's still doing more than most bassists & filling out the sound a lot. On the whole the biggest problem with the music might not. Then there are the lyrics. Neither Travers nor Appice aren't known wordsmiths nor seemingly have anything interesting to sing about, which means the results tend to distract from the music. Appice co-wrote "Do You Think I'm Sexy" with Rod Stewart which they revamp here. But, be warned that its nothing like the famed disco-tinged version, maybe to its detriment. Other tracks include stuff from the Beck, Bogart & Appice catalog & a couple solo Travers songs. Bonuses include a real highlight in a casual pre-show interview with Travers & Appice talking about how they got together to the music to each other & even Traver's attempt to start a fashion statement with a monocle. Travers dominates the conversation while Appice throws in a sly comment ... it's rough New York Long Island meets Canadian polite & fun to watch. 

Joe Satriani ~ Satriani Live! (live) (album review) ... The surfing alien goes live!

Style: instrumental, hard rock
Label: Red Ink Records
Year: 2006
Home: California

Members: Joe Satriani ~ guitar/harmonica/keyboard
Jeff Campitelli ~ drums
Dave LaRue ~ bass
Galen Henson ~ rhythm guitar

This two CD live album is taken from the DVD filmed in 2006 at The Grove in Anaheim, California. I can't help but recommend going for the DVD & leaving the CD for diehard fans. Some reviewers have called Satriani Live! a great introduction to JS's greatest hits as it pulls favorite tracks from his albums & is a high energy set where he just blasts away in stellar glory. That is indeed true as the show is during the tour for the album Super Colossal, a bad title but fitting for JS, but also draws songs from the successful Joe Satriani, The Extremist, Flying In A Blue Dream & Surfing With The Alien, while JS does tear into the air not holding back in the least. But, at the same time the songs are quite different here from the heavily overdubbed studio albums & some listeners may not like the bare-bones live versions that feel less like cohesive songs & more like long-winded guitar solos. I highly recommend Flying In A Blue Dream that defies audio belief. Satriani Live! should do the same but doesn't for the simple reason that it's impossible to duplicate heavily overdubbed & intricate studio creations on a single guitar with a backing band that ... stays in the back. In the studio there's a cohesiveness to all the instruments while the arrangements ebb & flow. Live JS has a tendency to overplay to compensate for the loss, but in turn kills some of the soft textures that make his albums so much of a cosmic journey. The technique becomes more important than the songs here. Thus, this essentially becomes an album for guitar nuts who love fancy finger work & all the sounds one can crank from a guitar, though the DVD is really better as someone of JS's caliber should be seen to fully get the experience of his skills. JS comes out looking like a technically great guitarist but the creative side as an arranger & composer is lost in the live setting. After the first CD one is either going to jump to the second or be turning to JS's student Steve Vai who has proven himself just as likely to drizzle a slow sad blues on stage as a hot footed rock song & not have to be in your face on either. There's really a draining aspect to a guitar soloist when there's no vocals & the songs tend to all have a driving rock feel & without being able to see it even more so. Some will enjoy the spontaneous raw energy but others will want to stick with the over-constructed studio work & will probably never miss not hearing this live album. As for those who think I'm too harsh ... I'm coming from the point of view of a casual listener wanting substance over technique, want song structure over showing off, want texture over flash, want a journey over an event. There's no denying JS's skills & influence, so there's no reason to rehash how great he is. He shows it here, but sometimes one just wants to float away in gentle cosmic guitar bliss without the flash.

LadderSouL ~ LadderSouL (aka debut) (album review) ... Climbing high or low!

Style: rock, pop
Label: Tate Music Group
Year: 2010
Home: California

Members: Steve Webb ~ all instruments
N.Y.C. Drumworks-Players ~ drums/percussion

LS is the outcome of multi-instrumentalist Steve Webb whose created a pop/alt rock-ish album of ballady guitar rock. One of the most distinctive features of the album is the organic mix of voice & guitar that creates a soft floating feeling with bouncing rhythms like one is cruising along in a boat riding with the waves. Going with the waves might be an apt metaphor for Webb himself, who was born in England into a musical family where all the kids were taught classical music, leading to piano recitals in Japan, only to move to America where he'd delve into alt rock & hip-hop & the underground rock scene. He'd also spend time in Germany playing music. But, don't expect Rammstein meets Eminem meets Loudness here. Far from it. This is actually a very low-key rock album which feels like more of the focus is given to the soft tenor vocals, with the guitars providing rhythmic textures, versus show off with in your face guitar solos as might be expected from a guitarist. "Clouds", "Treasure Hunt" & "Finding The Words" are particular stand-out singles made for the radio & will find wide appeal due to the fact that they have a pop rock sensibility but without being too pop or too heavy, having that soft tender feeling folks often crave at the end of the day over a glass of wine. Or, do you ever have one of those moments when you just want to head down to the park or some special secluded place outside with only the air, sun & passing strangers? When time melts away timelessly? This is the soundtrack to that moment.

Chris Sanders' Knight Fury ~ Time To Rock (album review) ... Birthed from Lizzy Borden's axe & Dave Mustaine's sneer!

Style: heavy metal, power metal
Label: self-released
Year: 2011
Home: Arizona

Members: Chris Sanders ~ guitar/b. vocals
William King ~ vocals
Dave Ellifson ~ bass
Ken Mary ~ drums

Additional: Adam Emmons ~ keyobards

In a 2011 interview I did with KF creator/guitarist Chris Sanders, formerly of Lizzy Borden & Nadir D'Priest, he said he wanted to turn back the clock & create some traditional heavy metal. It won't take but a few bars into the first song on the debut by KF, Time To Rock, to realize he's achieved his goal. Indeed this sounds out of time & maybe out of place in an era of reunion hair bands & alt rockers who riff without an edge into eternity. My knowledge of rock eludes me at the moment to be able to clearly throw out names like Twisted Sister or Ratt as points of comparison, but I played the album for a friend whose a middle aged non-heavy metal listener who grew up listening to Devo & Gary Numan & he immediately said it had a classic 80's rock feel. "Nothing Left" opens the album with a heavy dual guitar distorted riff that drops like a friendlier & more melodic sounding Halford against a pounding rhythm section that includes Megadeth's Dave Ellefson on bass, a connection made on Sanders' previous work with the Northern Light Orchestra. Sadly, it's a high profile guest but as bassist his work is somewhat tucked into the mix. William King enters with a highly distinctive tenor pushing the music forward. He's also responsible for lyrics on all but the opener, turning out a catalog of loneliness & loss, though the music comes across quite upbeat. The template is basically set-up for the album with this first song. Fast riffing, the obligatory guitar solo & William King's voice cutting & soaring over it like Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden or Yes's Jon Anderson. For those expecting something akin to Sanders previous band & the one that probably brought him the most fame, Lizzy Borden, this is nothing like that. If anything it might be closer to London, whose lead singer Nadir D'Priest Sanders played with for some time & who said Sanders was like Randy Rhoads. My friend said the album reminded him of Survivor's "Eye Of The Tiger". Ironically, we heard the song later being played at the restaurant we had dinner at so it mysteriously bears mention here. Time To Rock doesn't necessarily sound like Survivor but the same driving feel that makes that a great song to play in the car can also be found here. Also of note is that for a band formed by a guitarist this is not like, for example, Slash's output which has a tendency to be one long solo but Sanders actually keeps the soloing limited sticking to coming up with heavy rhythms. Check out "Battle For The Castle", not one of the four singles released for the album, which is one of the more interesting songs due to its vocal dynamics calling up an almost Iron Maiden-esque feeling & the fact the rhythm largely pulls away leaving the guitar solo in mid-air.

Van Canto ~ Hero (album review) ... The greatest da da dum dum!

Style: vocal, experimental, heavy metal
Label: Gun
Year: 2008
Home: Germany

Members: Dennis Schunke, Inga Scharf ~ lead vocals
Ross Thompson ~ higher b. vocals
Stefan Schmidt ~ lower b. vocals/wahwah solo guitar vocals
Ingo Sterzinger ~ lowest b. vocals
Bastian Emig ~ drums

Guest: Hansi Kursch ~ vocals

Though untraditional German rockers VC had gotten immediate attention on their debut, A Storm To Come, with their ear-catching rendition of Metallica's "Battery", a fast youtube favorite, it's their sophomore effort Hero that really is the highlight of their output to date. Quite often bands come out shining on their first album but it's the second where their sound really gels & they get a grip on what works & what doesn't, let alone become strong where they were weak. A Storm To Come suffered from some light arrangements where the lead singing was fine but the backing "dum dum da dum" vocalizations were not strong enough, too low in the mix & often moved into less than thrilling "ahs" & "oohs" & normal backing singing. It set up the band's gimmick but its Hero that moves things beyond gimmick & up a notch, or tightened the act. It happened a bit on the "Battery" but the rest of the album had too much normal acapella & put too much emphasis on the lead vocal & not enough on the 'rhythm section', which is the focus of VC. But, things have changed with Hero. The whisper is gone for harder heavy metal, or there's less focus on opera & more on the pounding rhythm section. For those that don't know what "dum dum da dum" vocalizations are or are feeling confused VC is not a normal heavy metal band. They do operatic metal with four male vocalists, a female vocalist & a drummer. That's it. No other instrumentation. All the rhythms & textures of a normal band are imitated via "dum dum da dum", "oh oh oh", "rakka rakka"& other non-word vocalizations while one guy & the girl take traditional lead vocals. They call themselves 'hero metal acapella.' The lead singer Dennis Schunke has a good full chest voice but not exactly a distinctive voice. His tone reminds me more of Paul Rodgers than any heavy metal singer, while Inga Scharf adds an operatic element with her high tones in a group of deep voiced men. So, obviously, the real attraction of the band is the backing vocals of the guys imitating a rhythm section. To hear someone sing Metallica is an experience in itself & put VC immediately into the limelight. Cover songs on subsequent albums have thus continued to be a main draw. The original songs being epic but lacking some of the punch of the covers. Hero takes this to a higher level than any album before or after. Their debut had two covers, Hero has half the album as covers: Manowar's "Kings of Metal", Nightwish's "Wishmaster", Deep Purple's "Stormbringer", Iron Maiden's "Fear Of The Dark", Blind Guardian's "The Bard's Song" & "Take To The Sky", the later featuring guest Hansi Kursch of Blind Guardian. Hero was the first album to feature a guest that would become the norm. It's hard to avoid not knowing about VC. I've had the opportunity to interview founder Stefan Schmidt who takes great pride in the original compositions, many from his pen, but sadly few are going to overlook these for the gimmick singles. Hero attempts to bring together both worlds. The only other weak part of the album is the vocalized guitar solos that are run through a wah-wah pedal thus losing their unique tones.

Steve Vai ~ The 7th Song (comp) (album review) ... Mystical 7 strings!

style: hard rock, instrumental
Label: Epic
Year: 2000
Home: California

Members: Steve Vai ~ guitars/keyboards/vocals
Guests: Mike Keneally, Tommy Mars, Scott Collard ~ keyboards
Devin Townsend ~ vocals
T.M. Stevens, Stu Hamm, Philip Bynne, Bryan Beller ~ bass
Terry Bozzio, Mike Mangini, Gregg Bissonette, Tris Imboden, Deen Castronovo, Pete Zeldman ~ drums

In terms of solo instrumental guitarists when I was younger I was into Joe Satriani as he was the chart-topper at the time, inheriting the title from Yngwie Malmsteen who had already gotten lost to his own brand of classical meets rock oblivion. But, as I've gotten older I've found myself getting into Satriani's once student SV. Ironically, I first heard SV while living in Japan as my housemate was into the B'z as the guitarist guests on a SV album. With an interest in Japanese music & how it relates to American music I had my first taste of SV. He stayed in my memory as sounding different than what I was used to, but didn't pursue him further due to being in the midst of a jazz/blues phase with a little Tom Waits & Sophie B. Hawkins thrown in. Today, as a collector of guitarist Al Pitrelli I find myself returning to Vai as the two often cross paths via the shared Berkeley education & the same albums. SV got his start in the Frank Zappa band which would set the stage for a career of something different & often challenging ... what I had picked up ia the B'z. He'd later replace Yngwie in Alcatrazz with Rainbow's Graham Bonnet on their under-rated third album before touring with Billy Sheehan as part of David Lee Roth's first solo band. He'd go on to join Whitesnake & create a seven string guitar now a somewhat regular sight in rock. For me, Satriani is a rocker, Yngwie a speed freak show-off but Vai is often the most emotional & with the widest range of experimentation. Because of this he might even be the most challenging to listen to & in turn the most rewarding. SV will let a note hang in the air forever like an old blues guy or run a fast scale in a prog-rock composition. He's more than just a guitarist's guitarist but someone trying to bring guitar playing to new levels. The 7th Song (Enchanting Guitar Melodies Archives Vol. 1) compilation, his first compilation album & the first of four entries in the Archives series of fairly obscure tracks, shows the note hanging in the air side of SV. Presenting a more mystical face to creating music than his peers, SV has made it a habit to always make the seventh song on his albums the melodic rocker. The 7th Song brings many of these seventh songs together with a few other pieces to show the melodic star-gazing side of SV. The linear notes say upfront that this collection forms a reflection of his desire for spiritual communion. We've come to not expect such insights from rock stars, or at least not something sounding so unpretentious & egotistical & in turn almost unsettling. With opener "For The Love Of God", from Passion & Warfare, featuring Indian tambura-esque drones there's no question that this is an slow esoteric journey & not just a rock guitar attack. SV takes us on a journey using seemingly simple soaring guitar lines gliding slowly like calm waves & sometimes occasionally rushing towards the shore. Satriani is known for overdubbing guitar over guitar but SV often keeps to one guitar & just lets the notes come in an almost goal-less improvised sounding fashion. I'm reminded of the playing of jazz great Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, such as in his One Truth Band or with Devadip Carlos Santana & Alice Coltrane. He is another guitarist interested in a journey that's not about verse, verse, chorus, verse, bridge & lots of annoying vocals with cheap lyrics cluttering up the voice of the guitar. Though, it takes great skill to keep the guitar talking instrumental after instrumental & have the conversation not sound forced or boring. SV has the skill in spades maybe more than his peers who often get more technical than expressive. Most of the songs on this release were recorded in different surroundings & line-ups between 1984 & 1990, but the instrumentation is generally very simple via duos & quartets & extremely uncluttered almost as if the songs are demos. "Burnin' Down The Mountain" is a first take, so for some songs demo might not be far off the path, but a demo requires a new song to be made & that's not the case here. Even where there's multiple overdubbed guitars the result sounds like a single instrument that's just able to say two words at once like the Tibetan chanting monks (for example, "Touching Tongues") not dueling guitars as has come to be the expected norm in a solo instrumental rock guitar outing. Further, all the tracks sound like they came out of the same session, thus giving The 7th Song a cohesive sound not typical to compilations. This is mostly because the bands are without doubt taking a backseat to SV. These songs come from his solo albums & thus its about him & not about a group. Whitesnake is one place to go if you want that side of SV or any sense of band interplay. Most of the songs get a bit of background info in the linear notes showing SV as a more complicated person than many musicians present themselves as. He speaks on everything to his belief in what religion is to recording in the afterglow of a forest fire. There's no rock star mask here, but just a guy who happens to play guitar exceedingly well & has great spiritual longings. Actually, in that sense he's quite average ... but most musicians will probably refrain from putting the controversial topic of religion out there outside of disguised song lyrics. But, SV has never been afraid of putting unsettling guitar playing out there & nor is he afraid of putting unsettling ideas out there just the same. SV has a guitar style that floats & glides like water & on first listen one will easily fall into a hypnotic state, perhaps even losing just how technically accomplished he is. But, if that's the case than he does a good job. Too often highly technical guitarists astound us with their almost inhuman skills but afterwards we find ourselves with a soulless vacant experience. Yngwie has been handed this criticism too many times. SV brings the best of both worlds together. SV has so many albums that the new listener may not know where to start. For something different without pounding drums & slashing rhythms this collection is a good starting point while showing SV seemingly naked with no fancy gimmicks between his playing, his mood & the listener. There's a couple new songs included for the already fan. This includes the special seventh song, "Melissa's Garden", which is SV's first step into digital recording. All proceeds from single sales of it go to the Melissa Kravets Memorial Foundation, a eye-catching thing to read in the linear notes. "The Wall Of Light" is an outtake from the Passion & Warfare" sessions, while the simply titled "Boston Rain Melody" is the recording of a jam session during a soundcheck jam that SV added some finishing touches to for this compilation.

Eternal Descent ~ The Phantom Of The Opera (EP) (album review) ... Lurking in the shadows!

Style: instrumental, heavy metal, goth, soundtrack
Label: Incendium
Year: n/a
Home: England

Members: Llexi Leon ~ guitars/keyboards/b. vocals
Keefe West ~ programming
Elysha West ~ vocals

It really is hard being a solo instrumental rock guitarist these days ... you can be a great composer, technical firestorm, emotional heartstring, rising comet in a world of stars ... but 30 years ago three guys named Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani & Steve Vai basically stamped out the competition & set the standard of comparison even long after they left the charts. If a guitarist does something in a classical motif he sounds like Yngwie or maybe falls into the traps Yngwie falls into, or he may sound like Berkeley trained Vai & has the diversity but not the success or maybe he's got the cascading guitar lines of Satriani. Or, maybe one takes a fourth option to just riff endlessly into uncreative oblivion. So, it's nice to find someone doing something that is trying to get out from under the shadows of the past. ED, or more particularly guitarist/composer Llexi Leon, does more than just get out of the shadow of past guitarists but also the music business in general & isn't even worried about music charts. But, more on that later. ED has crafted just a glimmer of a bigger picture he has in mind with this 3 song EP that, to not abandon the past completely for comparison's sake, is a bit of if Satriani had done Broadway or Broadway had copied Satriani. It opens with a metal version of the theme song from Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom Of The Opera from Broadway. A distorted guitar plays the opening lines against dark synthesizer drones & simple electronic beats before leading into a riffing verse, pounding drums & fast finger play. A female singer comes with her best Sarah Brightman followed by a deep voiced distorted male talking the lines of the Phantom, far darker than his Michael Crawford counterpart. The interpretation is fast & fierce & gives the song the same dark punch that Marilyn Manson gave to "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" drawing out the inner demon lost in the commercially friendly original. Its the Broadway that has never been or a soundtrack to a movie waiting to be made. It's the goth Phantom. Actually, these guesses aren't so far from the truth. Soundtrack is the hidden name of the game here, for those who venture to ED's website, but not to any Broadway show. Llexi Leon is more than just another guitarist but the co-creator behind the world of ED ... which is actually a comic book series that brings together lost souls, twisted dreams & rock guitarists with magical powers. There's also animated mini-movies & a tv pilot in the works. Numerous famous musicians have contributed to this magical battle of music & evil including Gus G of Firewind & Billy Sheehan. The Phantom Of The Opera is thus just a slice of a bigger picture & a bit of the soundtrack to a comic world ... making this the first comic soundtrack & probably the last I've ever had the chance to review. While for many of us the song might be connected to the theater, for ED it is a duet between characters Lyra & Loki, who fit the characters of the Phantom & Christine well. With this background the following two songs thus become like soundtrack pieces ... but without the bigger picture the EP ends up sounding like all the creativity went into "The Phantom Of The Opera" with two instrumentals to just fill up the album. The problem is that the opener has familiarity & thus gets all the attention. But the instrumentals, while in the same vein, hold some interesting arrangements. "Legends" includes a keyboard foundation against which rotates a calm classical guitar with electric soloing. It's an uncluttered duet with the softness of the classical guitar being the highlight as it takes up half the melody line & not just a fluff instrument as its often treated. Soft & sweet against gothic riffing. It is a perfect companion piece to "The Phantom Of The Opera." "Fallen" is in similar form with sweeping keyboards & female voice sans the acoustic guitar. One wishes that the album was longer than just three songs where more musical diversity can be shown. While, there's little hint that the songs belong to the Eternal Descent comic.

A Broken Code ~ Retribution For The Afflicted (album review) ... Do the afflicted count as the listeners of this album?

Style: ska, hip-hop, rap, metal
Label: self-released
Year: 2011
Home: Brooklyn, New York

Members: Ricardo Jones ~ drums
Nathaniel Daley, Lior Rachmany, Alroy Teves ~ guitars
Jenko ~ vocals
Ansa Gory ~ basss
Mansa Gory ~ horns/bass

Additional: Adam Halfi, Shane Jones ~ drums
Kevin Edell ~ horns

Guest: Neycha, Halo The Young Pharaoh, Nello Player, Jules Vasquez, Suicide, Kallyba, Bungo, Meloetry ~ vocals

ABC is one of the more musically challenging metal bands I've come across in awhile. Challenging in terms of both listening & writing about them. They bring together a couple styles of music, one of which I know & the other I enjoy but don't listen to much & am not so familiar with to feel comfortable talking about it more than cursory. So, haven't laid out the small print first ... with some reviews I go into band history & interesting attributes, members, etc, but with ABC I can really only write about my initial feelings & perceptions over a couple spins. Even reading about some of the guests players doesn't necessarily help interpret the new surroundings ABC puts them in & lessen my challenge. But, this is essentially the normal approach I tend to aim for it on this blog, even if I don't always do it, considering that's all anyone is likely to give ABC or any non-world famous band via itunes. Though, ABC is also presenting the mix or fusion of music I wanted to focus on when I first started this blog years ago. I wanted to share the metal that goes beyond the stereotype. The problem is a lot of bands talk the walk or a lot just aren't that good. ABC stomp the walk & are very good. I even went & looked up a couple of the guest singers cause I enjoyed them. ABC calls themselves hip-hop metal. Of course, in music everyone must have a label & labels can made all the difference in the world. A couple years ago I met a solo instrumental rock guitarist who named himself avant-garde instrumental, I said it was metal. He thus adopted metal-ish as he liked my argument & suddenly gained new listeners. A simple word opened his listening base ... & now he's found himself doing soundtrack music. Hip-hop metal is a decent moniker harkening back to Anthrax & Public Enemy. But, the stereotype surrounding it provides no challenges while ABC is full of challenges ... they challenge their own description. If you're expecting Anthrax & Public Enemy part two you won't be disappointed but you also won't be getting that. This was a mix of two separate bands with far different identities & musical styles coming together. ABC is not that. They might have started like that but what they present here is a new unified vision, not two bands going head to head. The focus is clearly on the rap here. The rap is upfront with the guitars sometimes tucked into the mix, while the array of guest vocalists joining frontman Jenko - Neycha, Halo The Young Pharaoh, Nello Player, Jules Vasquez, Suicide, Kallyba, Bungo, Meloetry - definetly help move the focus to more lyrical territories. This isn't a metal band meeting a rap band & seeing who can shout louder, but a metal band providing a different type of music foundation for some rap. Quite often the music takes a break from the metal riffing to fall back into a basic beats & textured rhythms leaving it sounding more like a rap artist bored with the standard dry electronic beats than a metal band looking for a different type of vocal attack. For this later example I think of ghetto metal rapper Bazaar Royale who never lets the guitar onslaught back down from behind him, almost to the point of overpowering his vocals. ABC have literally tried to create a rap metal band. A whole bigger than the parts. So, while hip-hop metal might be accurate ABC has just done what the name truly implies & not what the name has come to stereotypically imply. The guest singers also help break the hold of that restrictive moniker. Jenko's straight ahead rapping is joined by reggae, ska & Jamaica styles that go beyond rap or hip-hop. There's also some female singing with Neycha (i.e. "Dedicated To A Lie). Ska metal? Reggae metal? Further, with the notion of metal one expects fierceness & anger on some level. Hip-hop largely the same but not necessarily. Jenko laces his lyrical stories with criticisms of society & the necessity to bring change. The lyrics certainly have venom in their social bite & revolution in their call, though Jenko isn't drooling at the mouth like someone who hates everything. But, the music is often less heavy than one might someone expect. A lot of metal bands forget that riffing doesn't necessarily make for heavy music. Heavy is in the tone, style, mood, etc. Do you want just heavy metal or do you want heavy metal with a heavy attitude to go with it? At times ABC's guitar section sounds heavy feeling-wise, other times it's just riffing not really backing up Jenko's attitude, but then other times its quite experimental going beyond metal. How many metal guitars drop out to play a simple string of notes against a hip-hop beat ... done on live not electronic drums no less? If anything parts of the album remind me of Matisyahu's Youth that brought together Bill Laswell's swirling & charging guitars with Matisyahu's reggae influenced rapping. That was an ear-opening album for me & a favorite so I don't use the comparison lightly. Actually, for a moment I thought guest Nello Player was Matisyahu as their voices are so similar. Perhaps, on stage ABC presents a harder experience where the air is bit more muddied & the vocals less front & center.

Ian Stuart's White Diamond ~ The Reaper (album review) ... Living on the edge of hate!

Style: hard rock
Label: Rock-O-Rama
Year: 1991
Home: Britain

Members: Ian Stuart ~ vocals/guitar
Stigger ~ guitar/vocals

For what one might expect coming from IS he - yet again - shows us that our expectations are to be disappointed. Sometimes he'll do good on our expectations but other times, more often than not, he blows them all away. A small much hated minority will probably be upset at this as IS is the unofficial lyricist Laurette of the skinhead movement & the father of its boots & braces hard rock/punk look, but that's not the image or ideology shared here. IS came to fame singing & writing for the the Stooges-esque punk band Skrewdriver before getting into & becoming an out-spoken advocate of British Nationalism & Nazi-bred racialism that soon took over his work. Skrewdriver went from being another noisy British punk band to one of the first & certainly the most famous Neo-Nazi punk/rock bands in the world ... which led to even more fame & getting banned from performing in numerous places, even if on the other hand they were also activists against communism & putting the average person back in charge of their country. But, it's the negatives that outweight the positives for most people, preventing them from seeing the bigger person or bigger message. Lost underneath what many people will consider a perverse ideology is a poet as great as any other in rock music. Knowing his role in the skinhead movement one might expect an album laced with racist ideology & hate filled spewing along the lines of G.G. Allin. But, the truth couldn't be more opposite. IS sings of everything but. Dylan probably refers to race more in his entire career than IS does on The Reaper. If there's hate of anything it's hate of people who won't let him be himself (i.e. "Hands Of A Stranger), which for him is cause of rebellion, & those who judge others who judge (i.e. "Judge"). Or, as he says in "Living On The Edge" in the game of life "They say that one man is a savior & the next day he falls/no one can tell me how to lead my life." As for Allin similarities, outside of their fringe element identities & untimely deaths it's as poor a pairing as Frank Yankovic & Tupac Shakur. Unlike Allin's blasphemy for the sake of it & his noisy overdriven punk IS cared about the music & putting together enjoyable songs that honored the music forms of the past that best work towards telling his story. IS also knew that the worse the music the less people would be interested in listening. IS was not afraid of exploring different musical styles over his short career & ventured with different ad-hoc bands into folk rock & rockabilly, while with WD he finds himself with lo-fi 80's hard rock. But, even where it's production fails IS turns out another great straight from the gut basic rock album with nothing to fall back on but his lyrics of social insight, which is why anyone should & would turn to an IS album. Though, having given all that small print ... The Reaper might be IS's lyrically simplest albums, as if he was just looking to sing a bunch of straight ahead rock songs versus sharing a message. This is where one returns to not meeting expectations. The poetic quality he often displays is toned down here for straight ahead rock. IS is famous for writing about the working class, the Reds, capitalism & other topics, with race being something that is just one of many topics. But, here he stays away from political songs for much more basic ideas, common to any other musician but abnormal for IS. "Bright City Lights" tells the story of Billy who has a hit record & becomes a star as "Billy had what it took" until alcohol brings his life to an end, while "A Friend Is A Friend" basically lists what a best friend is. IS may not be ranting against the government here, but he is still a man of moral convictions & laces his songs with advocating moral solitude. It ends with the interesting "Wishing Well" that features guitarist Stigger from Skrewdriver on vocals turning in something that could be found in the Dio catalog. This was the first of two albums with WD. 1991 would also see him release albums by the rockabilly tinged Klansmen, a solo album & folk songs with Stigger called Patriotic Ballads. The Klansmen is an overtly racialist band so WD the other side of the coin. The next year he'd continue his prolific output with four more albums & an unfinished Skrewdriver album before he'd be killed at age 36 ending just over a decade of under-appreciated music.

Hanoi Rocks ~ Decadent Dangerous Delicious (hits comp) (album review) ... Glam rock nightmare!

Style: glam rock, hard rock
Label: Castle
Year: 2000
Home: Finland (disbanded)

Members: Michael Monroe ~ vocals/saxophone/harmonica/piano
Nasty Suicide, Andy McCoy ~ guitars/b. vocals
Sami Yaffa ~ bass/b. vocals
Nicholas "Razzle" Dingley ~ drums/b. vocals
Gyp Casino ~ drums

Additional: Morgan Fisher ~ keyboards
Katrina Leskanich, Miriam Stockley ~ b. vocals\\

At one point Finland's most famous or infamous export was a band called HR ... though Nightwish, HIM & Lordi have put up a serious fight for the title since. HR was thought to be by many the next greatest band in the hard rock world. But, after only a couple albums the sudden death of drummer Nicholas "Razzle" Dingley in a car wreck was a devastating bomb from which the band would never recover, leaving their potential crown to be inherited by Motley Crue. It's ironic that Crue frontman Vince Neil was at the wheel of the car. Even with replacement drummer Terry Chimes from The Clash, a definite inspiration in early HR songs & thus a good fit, frontman Michael Monroe quit in 1985 & the band immediately broke-up with barely a whimper. In 2002 Monroe & guitarist Andy McCoy reformed HR & toured until 2008 when Monroe went solo again with HR bassist Sami Yaffa behind him on stage. Critics, both at the time of their height & since, have often said that HR blended glam & heavy metal better than any band on the scene, particularly the Crue. That's debatable ... particularly considering Motley Crue would have a larger recording budget for their eventual quintessential album Dr. Feelgood, something HR never truly got to make, while HR is truly a glam band while Crue is more hard rock with a glam image. HR certainly has more raw punk energy a la the Clash & Ramones than Motley Crue ever had underneath the make-up, spandex & power ballads. But, for those that say HR isn't a musical inspiration it's hard to deny that they didn't give sleazy glam back to the world. Calling on the New York Dolls & David Bowie in both sleazy songs, roughness & image HR were the first 80's band to keep the glam look alive & have been credited as the initial inspiration of the first generation of L.A. glam/hair metal bands such as Crue, Poison, Ratt, Guns N' Roses & countless others. Today, younger fans would probably credit Motley Crue as the source, if they thought about it at all. They might have been the biggest but they didn't create their image in a vacuum. Those who regard history take a step back to HR & give credit where it's truly due. But, for all this legacy, listening to HR without the background it's almost surprising how HR has become so big & was so big. They are certainly a band where one had to be there at the time to truly understand their impact. The music has far from the commercial polish nor the big guitar sound that became the norm of the 80's. In some ways they're very out of place in the 80's being clear students of the New York Dolls, from the raw music, the cocky androgynous look & even Monroe's quirky unpolished singing. Actually, Monroe might be the weakest link in the band for those only hearing from a musical standpoint. He has bravado that Vince Neil never had but Neil has the better voice for the high notes. But, the New York Dolls or Ramones were not led by great singers either. The New York Dolls also inspired Twisted Sister but while both HR & Sister adopted the look Sister took a heavy metal approach to the music instead of glam rock. HR went for fun while Sister went for scary. Many have even called HR the only authentic band as they made the glam metal image their own while most everyone else was just an imitator based on how much commercial success they could find by adopting the image. In many ways HR sound too much like an imitation of the Dolls. Which also means that those who don't like the Dolls or glam outside of Bowie will probably not get into HR. For those people, HR probably won't climb out of the heap with individuality like their reputation suggests they do. HR is so much a student of the past that they even brought in Overend Watts from father glam-rockers Mott The Hoople to produce their fourth album Back To The Mystery City. Considering all hard rock going on in the word at the time HR sounds out of place & one can wonder what would have happened if they hadn't split. Would they have moved music back to a past & away from where it ended up going before everything came crumbling with grunge? One can only wonder. This two CD collection is probably the best of all HR compilations pulling in tracks from all their pre-reunion albums. There's only a few alternative versions (i.e. "Malibu Beach Nightmare", "I Want You", "Malibu Beach", "Kill City Kills") & thus is stuffed full of tracks fans will already know. Anyone who wants an introduction to HR is going to get nearly everything here that they may want & more. Though, a single CD set will be better for those that aren't glam fans & just want a taste. It's a long listen for one who doesn't get into the music as the band's musical variety will appear minimal. But, it should be mentioned that this is 'nearly everything'. Strangely, there's no inclusion of anything from the album Two Steps From The Move, the final album with Razzle, that is supposedly the album that could have been their climactic career defining moment. It even featured production & writing by Bob Ezrin with Mott The Hoople's Ian Hunter brought into compose. The album also features their biggest hit in the Creedence Clearwater Revival cover "Up Around The Bend", but this is missing in this 2 CD collection that poses as a greatest hits collection. But, in terms of representing the other albums this collection is very fair with nearly an equal number of tracks from from 1981 to 1983 with all the early hits. HR may not be your musical cup of tea but they are worth finding out about to fill in a bit of the musical puzzle you may not have realized had been missing. Motley Crue might have written the book, but this is the true dirt.