ANIMALS AS LEADERS

I was absolutely amazed by this. Easily the best solo effort of the year so far. The technicality, the progressions and melodies you can just hum along to. The only downfall is that it's primarily a guitarist's album. Despite all the various synths, beats and bass backing all the music up, the guitar is what really leads the way. Other than that, it's a hell of an album. A friend of mine isn't even a tech/metal metal, let alone guitar solo albums, and he thought it was very interesting and wanted me to burn him a copy.

Tosin Abasin varied a lot of his playing, using different styles and techniques, while still keeping a prog metal sound. He uses such a diverse amount of sounds to back up his playing in this piece of work. I particular enjoyed the mix of real drums and electronic beats in the song, "The Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing." How quickly he can move from heavy, pounding riffs to smooth chords and arrays of noodling, clean guitar and still keep everything tight and accurate is absolutely amazing. His guitar solos seem to fit pretty well too. I hate when guitar solos seem out of place because the player decided to go all-out within a more gentler chord progression, but I'm sure Tosin is intelligent enough to know that. A guitar solo is only as good as it's backing rhythm.

I really enjoyed how everything came together in this album. Very interesting, eccentric and my most-listened-to solo album for me. Although displaying great musicianship and many prog elements, it's not essential to enjoy progressive music. A definitely great addition for a guitar fan's 2009 favorites or someone how is just looking for something fresh and new.