Tony MacAlpine

Musicians rarely stay relevant after a 25 years long career. They mostly tend to use their early classic albums as material for their occasional tours and call it a day. Tony Macalpine is a rarity. He surely left an important mark on instrumental music, yet instead of resting on his laurels he continues to push his creativity. With this new solo album, MacAlpine reached some extra high peaks in both creativity and shredding skills.

This self-titled album contain some highly complex compositions with dozens of rich melodies and endless layers of heavy riffs. MacAlpine used for this album an eight string guitar that boost the metal spirit quite a bit. Actually, this is probably his heaviest album to date. The melodies on this album have a quite progressive timbre. This album doesn't contain the old school neoclassical approach MacAlpine had in the '80's, but instead has a different progressive approach with a solid focus on deep harmonies. If you'll deeply analyze some of the melodies here, you'll notice constant scale changes in extremely short periods. This album could have been played even 2x slower and still sounds sophisticated, unlike quite many shredding albums!

The sound production is great as well. The guitars have a powerfully bright and heavy tone that perfectly suits both the crushing riffs and the catchy harmonies. Drums are precise and gives a strong background for MacAlpine's guitar extravaganza and are perfectly mixed with the popping bass.

Overall, this is in my opinion one of MacAlpine's best albums and the best metal album for 2011 (which was quite a weak year in my opinion). Go buy this amazing album and enjoy every moment.

Worth checking tracks are: 'Ölüdeniz', 'Dream Mechanism', 'Angel Of Twilight' and ' Summer Palace'.