The audience is listening!
Firstly I must admit a distaste to instrumental albums for guitarists, who for the most part use them to expand an already larger-than-life ego, and quite honestly the only one that I’ve paid much more than a fleeting lending-of-ear to was Steve Vai’s huge selling album from 1990 ‘Passion And Warfare’. John 5, who was born John William Lowery in 1971, has played slightly in the shadows, firstly with 80’s Rock Vixan Lita Ford, and then the late Randy Costello and various Kiss members including Paul Stanley. He’s also been in band’s with, or recorded with, the likes of Rob Halford, David Lee Roth, Marilyn Manson (where he got his name John 5) and more recently with Rob Zombie. For this wide range of large personalities, I feel that John can be forgiven for this slice of indulgence, however it’s worth pointing out that this is in fact his fourth solo album, so my personal jury is still out…
So to this here disc entitled, ‘Requiem’ in which we get a wide range of styles that are all knitted together without hardly a break between some of the tracks. First song, ‘Sounds Of Impalement’ starts off like a hard rock/Metal track but without the lyrics, and for the most part this is what we get with the album. John 5 is a good guitarist. A great guitarist in fact, however this will only and truly be appreciated by other guitarists or musicians, as others like me also like vocals. ‘Heretic’s Fork’ is slightly slower and heavier bordering on enjoyable, leading to the slightly more industrial sounding, ‘Noisemaker’s Fife’ that whilst starting off acoustic for a minute soon pumps up into a beast of a chunky rifftastic Metal song.
I’m starting to think that the rest of the album is going to be along the same lines when from nowhere we have the short sharp shot of an acoustic jig that has a slightly Country mix to it, in ‘Pity Belt’ before the same riff jumps into an electric guitar and the tempo quickens as the song changes to ‘Cleansing The Soul’ and has the flamboyant double bass-peddle drums, and guitar licks that jump around with melodies whilst also sinking to deep dark riffs. ‘The Judas Cradle’ is slightly long-winded and takes a while before kicking into to any sort of tempo, and you are almost waiting for Mr Manson’s dulcet tones to kick in as the keyboards give off a freaky background whine…
Again, we have what could only be described as a barroom jam in a Shuck’n’Jive Country waterhole deep in Georgia someplace in the short song, ‘Pear Of Anguish’ before things fire up again in, ‘The Lead Sprinkler’, a song that is a great headbanger, if nothing else, with the addition of high pitched synthesizers last seen with The Osmonds and their crazy horses…Then whilst a good dose of Spanish guitar might impress the ladies, it doesn’t me, and thankfully Mr 5 realises this so then to really annoy me breaks into a six-minute song. It’s too long for a good song with vocals, and whilst the changing tempos and riffs does make this quite entertaining, I’m waiting for it to wind up after a knuckle full of minutes. Then to close the album we have the title track, ‘Requiem’, a song that is full of atmospherics and ends the album quite uniquely.
As instrumentals go this is a good one, and whilst I am certainly not condoning them, if I had to listen to one then this one has balls with deeper riffs and giving musically challenging and satisfying songs, rather than over indulgent showcases for show-offs of those musicians not getting enough satisfaction out of their current addition to their individual bands. As my inner city chums might say, enough respect due…