Search - Mark Wood :: Against the Grain

Not right for me...Maybe for you

Charles S. Holzheimer | Centennial, CO | 03/10/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"This the third Mark Wood CD I have purchased and reviewed. As I stated before, Wood toured with the West Coast Tour of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO) in 2008 and that was my first exposure to him and his wonderful electric violin talent. A Few Of My Favorite Things and Voodoo Violence are exceptional recordings and I highly recommend them!! Wood displays his virtuosity on the electric violin to the point of breathlessness on those albums. I'm not talking orchestral violin here either. We're talking, "How did he squeeze that sound out of a violin?" type music. Hard rock all the way.

Against The Grain appeared to me to be an attempt to link Wood's violin skills with the heavy metal surge of the time (1994). Technically this disc is by the band "Wood-Featuring Mark Wood." The addition of other musicians and vocals only eroded Wood's brilliance. You can still hear the violin on this recording but it is so blended into the growling, sometimes screamed lyrics that it loses its magic.

While I don't care for this type of music myself, the recordings seem well crafted and there are no glaring issues that make the disc itself bad. A fan of metal music will probably appreciate this recording immensely."