PASSION AND WARFARE

Passion & Warfare is a strange and tedious album. In his second effort (this is my first experience with him), Steve Vai tries to guide his music through a sort of blend between his teacher master Joe Satriani and avant-garde pioneer Zappa, who also invited Vai to join his band in the eighties. So, it could be defined as an avant-metal release or something (Btw, I'm not pretty sure if Steve is suitable enough to this site..... but who am I to disagree?).

In other words, he tries to be as interesting as Frank Zappa and as subtle as Satriani. 'For The Love Of God', supposing to be the definite highlight, is a sad attempt to reflect some Satriani influences; same in songs like 'Liberty', 'The Animal' and the closing track. Sounding as a kind of atmospheric lullaby, 'Ballerina' looks quite pretentious to the purpose it seems to has; it would work perfectly as a fairytale tune, though. 'The Audience Is Listening', another well-known track, doesn't take any direction; musically has nothing to offer but insane distortion. The entire album is lack of inspiration and composition's coherence. Hats off to Steve Vai as a guitar player and whatever you want, but as a composer, IMHO he's not that excellent. The only decent and original track of this CD is the electro-acoustic tune 'Sisters'.

I don't know..... I think it's reccomended for electric guitar lovers (since in this album Vai explores the guitar very deeply), but not for the average proghead. And do remember that this review is just an opinion from a guy who doesn't like metal in almost any of its incarnations. But, for example if you've heard all Satriani's early discography before this (like me), you simply don't need to listen to Passion & Warfare.

As a conclusion, Steve Vai as a composer isn't as good as playing guitar or doing live performances. It could mean that his performances with G3 for example, are much more suitable than his studio discography. Since one star means "for completionist", it would be fine to a prog completionist who's looking for the magnum-opus (according to the critics and ratings) from each contemporary musician, and Steve Vai is arguably the best guitarist of our era. Add a half-star for 'Ballerina' & 'Sisters' ;)