UNHEIMLICH

Gianluca Ferro is one of the most acomplished prog metal guitarists in last decade. He played over the years with prog metal bands like Heart of Sun, Time Machine, etc and has a solo career for some years now, in both cases Ferro is an excellent musician and composer, showing to us listiners that he needs a place on the podium for sure. This is his second solo effort from 2010 named Unheimlich issued at SG records. I had great expectations with this album, knowing Heart of Sun and Time Machine and how great job he done there, this album for sure not desepoints at all. Maybe little hard to get into at first spin, after 3-4 rounds is a total grower, at least for me, brilliant skills has this man and above all a perfect and crystal sound, makes from this Unheimlich a winner in this genre. He knew how to combine the riffs, the sherd, with progressive elements and to create something realy valuble in this field, this album is no noodling album, the originality is almost all over the album, the skills and both arrangements and talent is melted in a great manner. he remind me in places with John Petrucci's solo abum Suspended animation but aswell with bands like LTE or Canvas Solaris, progressive metal elements melted and combined with fusion arrangements. From cruchy guitar parts and fat sound like on opening tracks Olympia's Strangely Mechanical Actions, Solaris to mellow and full of finess parts like on Life in a raindrop, excellent piece, Gianluca Ferro done a great job here, oscilating from fast to slow , from edgy parts to mellow always in agreat manner, with talent and originality. Also besides guitar parts the rest of the instruments realy shine, bass and drums are all ovbe rthe place, complex and pointing exactly when needed, excellent job aswell from musicians involved. The keyboards parts are done by Ferr and are ok, even great in places but not so great as his guitar chops, only good. So almost a perfect abum in instrumental progressive metal world, I never though will impress me so much this album after first spin, but here it is a tru jam of an album after a couple of listnigs. Recommended for sure, pleasent, solid, tight in musicianship and original in compostions. 4 stars, unfairly underrated musician and album.