ANGEL VIVALDI

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.

Haven't been to the Angel Vivaldi page for so long that I didn't notice that he finally got an expanded discography! Don't be fooled by his classification as tech/extreme, as he is at his heart a neo-classical shredder influenced by the likes of Joe Satriani, only plays much heavier and denser (there is a second guitarist in tow). The all-instrumental songs are naturally all about the incredible solos, but at the same time I wouldn't call it aimless shredding, as his compositions do have certain hooks, recurring themes and flow (at least maybe starting from this mini-album on). And on this EP one can also find among the dense shredding some clean breaks and even a power ballad of sorts. The guy is pretty cool.

— First review of this album —

Angel Vivaldi (according to all sources I've looked at, yes, that is his real name) is listed as tech/extreme prog metal, though he may fit closer under plain prog metal. Revelations isn't super-heavy, best described as an album of instrumental, neo-classical shredding rather than any of the subgenres listed by the site.

With overtones of djent, each song is devoid of typical structure. Instead, it is filled with highly technical soloing, the album's main focus. Vivaldi produces some mindbendingly intense guitar work, mainly based around shred but including some melodic aspects as well. The riffs are not usually very memorable, as showcasing the impressive solos takes first priority, not only over the riffs but every other aspect of the music too. If you're looking for a good guitar album, you need to hear this.

But looking at Revelations under the broader scope of prog, things are different. Vivaldi is clearly talented on the guitar, but he has difficulty writing songs that show off many other features of musical value. Revelations' biggest flaw is its lack of variation and how it really exists only to show off Vivaldi's guitar skill and while actual songwriting takes a backseat. The first six songs on this album sound too similar to each other, without defining characteristics to set them apart. They seem to be stuck in a loop of mid-paced, mid-volume shredding.

The last two songs change up the sound a little, adding some much-needed diversity to the samey shredding. If all the songs on this album were like Finale and Stepping Through the Looking Glass, the longest and best tracks from Revelations, I would be giving this four stars. Finale, enters a quiet mid-section and Vivaldi plays a tasteful acoustic solo, the song builds back up again into a part with the album's most memorable riff. Fortunately, Finale is actually the second-last song because the symphonic-tinged STTLG bests it, bringing down the volume at about four minutes and coming back up into an epic and intense tradeoff of solos between the guitar and keyboards. Definitely a strong finish to an album that is somewhat lacking.

Revelations, an exercise in neoclassical shred, is excellent guitar album and a fairly decent prog effort. Vivaldi is a skilled guitarist, though his songwriting is not the best and lacks variation, aside from the last two songs. Shred is not dead.

In the artist description above Angel Vivaldi (I am not still not sure this is a real name, because it sounds so cheesy! :)) is said to have a djenty tone. Well, if you consider Swedish band Meshuggah as forefathers of djent, this has some complicated riffs, but is not Meshuggah. It's technical, but not extreme (I am referencing the style as classified here on PA). Think more of a neoclassical guitar shredder (let's take Joe Satriani as a fellow Italian-American from the New York-New Jersey area), but more metallic, dense and generally overdriven. I could personally do without the constant double kick drumming, which is here for pure technicality's sake and is mixed too prominently. The artist's progginess, I guess, is derived here from high level of technicality and free-form structures.

This is a 4-song instrumental EP, but so dense that it feels like a complete album. Cool album concept, by the way. I would personally prefer a little more diversity in sound, for example, clean guitar breaks, continuing the same theme, but without the overdrive, which worked so well on an earlier song, Acid Reign (Angel Vivaldi has more records than it is listed here, by the way). But the guy's skill is undoubtably very high.