Review: "The Story of Light" by Steve Vai

The Story of Light

I love Steve Vai. My affection for him and his playing is not represented in my album collection as well as it should be, but I'm working on rectifying that. Mr. Vai and I go back a long ways. I still remember seeing him for the first time in the David Lee Roth videos. (This is the second recent album review of a former DLR guitar player. There most be something about Diamond Dave wanting to work with the best.) Do you remember that triple necked ambidextrous heart guitar?

In this day and age, Steve Vai is an elder statesman of instrumental guitar. In my playlists, Mr. Vai's music goes into to spots: metal and instrumental. Neither one of those categories accurately reflects what Steve Vai is. He is a stunning artist on the guitar. When I listen to his music, I simply get lost inside what he has created. In my mind's eye I see complex textures and landscapes when he is playing a melody line. Though he's often simply called a shredder, he's far more than that. Leonardo da Vinci was simply called a painter, but that was only one aspect of what he did as well. I could wax poetic about what Mr. Vai is and isn't for about three thousand words, so I suppose I should move on with this narrative and get to the CD.

Review: "De Vermis Mysteriis" by High On Fire

This is my first foray into what is called Stoner Thrash. I can remember when I was a little kid listening to what we termed heavy metal because that's what Steppenwolf called it, but now there are so many designations of what metal is and part of it is where it's from, but this really has nothing to do with this album, and I'm rambling about this, so I'll move on.

High On Fire is a power trio from Oakland. "De Vermis Mysteriis" is the sixth release by the trio and it's supposedly a high minded concept album about a very strange story.

 The story line revolves around a character who's the twin brother of Jesus Christ who has to give his life force to the incubating messiah so that Jesus may live and redeem the world as foretold, but then after giving his life force to his in utero brother, he becomes a time traveler on the order of Sam Beckett from Quantum Leap. Confused yet? So was I, but I became very intrigued and I bought the CD.