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Smooth

Paul J. Mahoney | UK | 04/20/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Well, after completely disregarding the other guys review, I decided to buy this marvelous little gem I stumbled across whilst reading an article about White Lions legendry guitarist Vito Bratta. I was pleased to see that the guitarist after leaving white lion, had decided to record a couple of background riffs and lead solo's for an album before his wrist injury. My excitement stepped up a level when I found out the album just so happened to be a mainly instrumental project created by the joining of Savatage's virtuoso guitarist Al Pitrelli and Awesome basist Randy Coven, a cobination that had succeded quite well once before on one of Randy Covens earlier solo albums. The result was this hard rocking, funk laminated technical Gem of an album, with some seriously decent guest musicians of the rock world, including Zakk Wylde, Steve Morse and Jimmy Yaeger. The album boasts a degree of sounds from funk rock, to easy going ballads and a bit of jazz and piano thrown in the mix. You can tell that Pitrelli really breaks free from the resrictions of Savatage and completely dominates the album with what is clearly his best work yet. The album is quite reminicent of Blues sareceno's solo work with a mix of John Petruci style breathtaking randomness. But the album somewhat lacks depth and feeling, and perhaps takes intrumentalism to the extremes without maintaining a tuneful melody on occassion. But overall the album is easy to listen to and has its moments, highly recomended for a summers day drive. If you like Satriani and Vai etc then this is the album for you, a very distinguished gem, but sadly not very well known."