UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE

Just like his namesake before him, Vivaldi has made a song cycle based on the four seasons. This time, however, the Vivaldi name has produced, instead of a orchestral work, a 4 track EP of short instrumental guitar heavy tracks in a djent metal style. The neo-guitar gods of today aren't exactly the same as the guitar gods of yesteryear, namely Malmsteen, Vai, or so on. Now, they use musicians that are just as talented as they are. Does this make the music that the solo guitar artist puts out any better?

Well, in the case of this EP "Universal Language", not that much. What you get here are 4 tracks of extremely ripping guitar where each track basically sounds like the last one. After time, you start to pick out a melody or two, but in the end, it sounds like a very talented individual jamming on his guitar, with a band backing him up. With the djent style, you get that crazy drumming, which is actually more of a nuisance and actually distracts from everything.

In other words, there is a hell of a lot of talent in the performance, but not so much in the song craft. In the end, you get some wild jamming tunes that really don't contribute, at least in my mind, to the topic at hand. I mean, yes these are 4 tracks about the seasons, but they could have just as easily been tracks about each of the individual 3 little pigs and the big bad wolf. They just sound like 4 heavy guitar jamming tracks, without any spotlight on anyone else. Sometimes it makes me wonder if the artist can play with emotion, or can they only play rapid fire notes and riffs. It's useless to describe the tracks in that they all sound the same when it comes down to it. In the end, there really is no satisfaction in listening to it all.

Those that love heavy guitar solo jamming will love this, no doubt. For me, I have nothing against guitar solos, but there has to be some songcraft to the entire rigmarole, otherwise, it's hard to tell the difference, at least at first glance and even later to a slightly lesser effect, from one track to the other. Yeah there's talent and great production, but as far as ingenuity, it's all just average. 3 stars.