Saturday 7 June 2008

John 5 - Requiem

John 5 is a guitar virtuoso who is way ahead of the game in solo guitar playing, He fuses country/bluegrass with metal and rock to create a mix that's mindblowingly fresh and refuses to let anything stop him from producing more & more great albums. His previous three albums were received with open arms into the shred community and John's third album "The Devil Knows My Name" was voted best shred album of 2007 finally getting him the recognition deserved.

Fans of John 5 will not be disappointed with Requiem.


Requiem's opening track was released on John's myspace several months ago and was entitled "Sounds Of Impalement", this is a stunning piece of guitar work personifyng John's technique and signature sounds all in just over 4 minutes. Next up is "Heretic's Fork" which again displays immense handling of the guitar and techniques only John 5 can pull off such as chicken pickin and banjo rolls on the guitar, the opening riff to this track is powerful enough to have skeptics blown away and there minds changed.

This flows perfectly into Noisemakers File in which the intro shows a slightly more mellow side to John's playing with clean sounding guitars and typically country scales & themes being used, but once again this leads into a rock influence and John perfectly fused the two.

By now your thinking sounds good and whats with the odd track names, well John 5 decided to entitle all of the tracks on "Requiem" after unknown torture devices all of which should end with a "Requiem" meaning funeral piece of music. It just so happens Requiem is the final track on the album and what an ending it is. The slow tempo mixed with the slightly disturbing guitar lines leaves you satisfied that what you just heard was something rather special and unique.

John 5 - Sounds Of Impalement.mp3

Buy Requiem

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