SUSPENDED ANIMATION

As a big fan of Dream Theater, and especially as an admirer of the playing of John Petrucci, I was excited to hear of his solo album. After hearing the end result I was pleased. It was exactly what I had expected and made a pleasant guitar driven listening experience.

Suspended Animation is obviously concentrated only on guitar, with bass and drums taking the back seat but still offering solid contributions to the overall sound. In other words, they create the space for Petrucci to flex his musical muscles. His playing is all over the place, and most of the time over the top. He can play emotionally and slowly too, though it is on minority on this album, which is fine by me.

The songs are pleasant enough with great melodies and I even ended up humming several of them after listening to this. The style is in the vein of Joe Satriani or Steve Vai, with the emphasis being a bit more on the metal side of things. It's nothing groundbreaking, but I disagree with many that Suspended Animation sounds like your typical Satch or Vai album. You can really hear Petrucci's own individual style through every song. So while the album is a bit generic, Petrucci really makes it his own.

So in conclusion, the album is a good one, I would say a must have to those of us who like instrumental melodic guitar rock with lots of showing off. 3 stars.