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Frank Zappa - Hot Rats CD (album) cover

HOT RATS

Frank Zappa

 

RIO/Avant-Prog

4.36 | 1828 ratings

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Prog Leviathan
Prog Reviewer
3 stars This, my first Zappa album, is as delicious a surprise as I could ask for, filled with gritty, greasy, lengthy jams. The instrumental blend of jazz/rock is excellently balanced here (with a touch of weirdness for good measure), and the heavy, bluesy grooves don't let up a single beat. Zappa's guitar work is nothing short of Herculean, since he delivers minutes-long solos throughout, the rest of the band doing a fine job keeping up and throwing their own jams into the mix.

Yet, for me Hot Rats is definitely style over substance. The jazzy rock positively grooves... and grooves and grooves until it all blurs together into one extended showcase of crunchy improvisation.

Depending on where one comes from, this makes either 47 minutes of joy or boredom; I am somewhere in the middle. I am not a fan of hippie or stoner rock, and appreciate the signature Zappa weirdness evident throughout, as well as the harder jams found on many of the songs. But, I tend to favor composition over improvisation, so the extended nature of solos and songs tend to get very repetative.

Still, a fine, flavorful addition to any guitar lovers music library, easy enough for most anyone to groove along to-- for a while.

Songwriting: 3 Instrumental Performances: 4 Lyrics/Vocals: NA Style/Emotion/Replay: 4

Prog Leviathan | 3/5 |

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