| CD REVIEW Jeff Loomis |
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Band : Jeff Loomis After withstanding to the constant pleas of his fans for years on end, Nevermore guitarist Jeff Loomis finally gave in to to their demand for an instrumental solo album. Well, maybe that's pulling the truth by the hairs a bit. The truth is rather that he finally managed to get some time on his own, away from the band, now that the other Nevermore members were taking some time out to replenish their batteries! Hum...and even that is not completely true, since Nevermore frontman Warrell Dane had his solo debut Praises To The War Machine out in April of last (and album to which Loomis contributed a solo). For Loomis things started at a young age, getting his first guitar when he was 9 or 10 years old. Self taught, he played in several Wisconsin cover bands as a teenager, but didn't get into sérious practice until he was 15, taking the likes of Jason Becker, Marty Friedman (their joint venture Cacophony) and Yngwie Malmsteen as influences to develop his own shredding techniques. One year later, he won Wisconsin's Guitar Wars contest with his band Fear-Tech. When Megadeth's lead guitarist Jeff Young left that band, Jeff got a call from a Los Angeles friend suggesting him to audition for the part. As things turned out, Pantera's Diamond Darrell got the position. But Jeff díd catch the attention of Seattle Power Thrashers Sanctuary [who, incidently, had had their 1987 debut album Refuge Denied (which was followed by 1990's Into The Mirror Black full-length and the Into The Mirror Live mini-album...all released through Epic), produced by Dave Mustaine!]. Only a year after Jeff joined, Sanctuary split. Teaming up with Jeff to form Nevermore in 1992, would be Sanctuary frontman Warrel Dane, bassist Jim Sheppard (also Sanctuary, and formerly with Sleze, a local Glam Metal act which featured frontman Layne Staley, who'd grow to stardom with Alice In Chains) and drummer Mark Arrington. Since then the band has (which has gone through a couple of line-up changes with Van Williams taking up the drum position at the end of 1994 and 3 additional guitarists coming and going) offered us 6 full-length albums (all of which released through Century Media), material which has benefitted greatly from Loomis prolific writing talents. Anyway, with the hiatus in Nevermore's career (their last album was 2005's This Godless Endeavour), both Dane and Loomis took out some time to write the material needed for their solo albums, Loomis finally teaming up with producer Neil Kernon (who'd already produced Nevermore's first three albums) and drummer Mark Arrington (eh...remember?) in late March of this year, and laid down the 10 tracks which make up this album. Now, I have to admit that in fact I've only ever heard one Nevermore album (because I was transcribing a telephone conversation into an interview article) before...and I don't even remember which! So maybe you can understand that my memory of the bnd's music was somewhat stored away in the back of my memory...memory which started working at full force again when going through Nevermore's MySpace page (as well as Jeff's, where he put down some tracks for comparison). And, when listening to the available material, one becomes aware that even withing the normal structure of song-oriented music, Jeff is indeed a great guitarist who's developed his own style within the shred guitar genre. Just like his great examples, he knows how to combine the pure shredding with great enchanting guitar melodies to optimize the appealing effect of the whole. As guests on the album, Jeff invited Ron Jarzombek of Watchtower to play a shared solo on "Jato Unit", Pat O'Brien of Cannibal Corpse to do the same on "Rage Against Disaster", and Kernon himself a playing fretless guitar solo in "Cashmere Shiv", with Jazz solo artist Michael Manring further contributing to that same song (at least that's what I gather from the atmosphere in the song, because the info isn't quite explicit/ clear about that). After the first three pure shredders ("Shouting Fire At A Funeral", "Opulent Maelstrom", and "Jato Unit"), Jeff takes on a somewhat more sensitive mode for the ensuing "Azure Haze" (with a degree of darkness built into the opening) and "Cashmere Shiv" (with a Jazzy solo), also adding a such passage to "Rage Against Disaster" (which obviously has other sensitivities built into it as well, but of a more aggressive, perhaps angst-ridden kind). A piano is used in the more-than-beautiful calmer opening of the ensuing "Sacristy", blending without a trace into guitar play after about a minute. When the 2-minute mark comes the track suddenly morphs into something more andrenalized. "Divil Theory" starts off somewhat weird, then starts shreding away in a develishly attractive/ repulsive way...like one might expect from a track titled that way, actually. Like "Rage...", "Miles Of Machines" opens quite quietly and calm in Spanish-styled acoustic, but then opens its blast holes to full scorching effect. There's a short return to a slower passage, but the track ends in pure shredding verocity. It also stops rather abruptly. Closing off the album is the real "ballad" of the album "Departure", opening quite darkly with keyboard sounds to which acoustic guitar is added. The keyboards then switch to an orchestrated mode to add that balled effect. A fitting closing to a wonderful album indeed! You can find an mp3-file of "Jato Unit" at myspace.com/jeffloomis, but that's all off this album. There's a few videos with Jeff firing away on all six at the recent NAMM showcase in Hamburg, though. And as I've told you before, there àre 4 additional Nevermore tracks to help you make up your mind about what this album might sound like. Anyway, if you like what Jeff does with his main band, or are into the whole guitar shred/ instrumental album thing, you certainly don't need to doubt about purchasing Zero Order Phase, because in its class it stands up proudly next to albums by the likes of Becker, Friedman, Tony Macalpine, and more of that ilk! In other words, to me it's also worthy to be added to my year-lists! 98/100 Tony. |