Review Summary: Joe Satriani delivers us another good guitar album, but slightly lacks from his other works.
Professor Satchifunkilus and the Musterion of Rock
The problem with alot of people who judge music is that they judge it by the musicianship. A song could have a simple 2/4 time signature, three power chords, and a simple base-snare drum beat, and still be a fantastic song. However, an artist can create one of the greatest shredfests of all time, yet fail for being a crappy attempt at an epic. For example, "Blitzkreig Bop", by the Ramones, has no tricky musicianship behind it, just three chords, a simple drum beat, and a bassline that just mimicks the roots of the guitar chords. The track turned out to be very successful and changed punk rock forever. On the other hand, "Through The Fire and the Flames", by Dragonforce, was a power metal epic that contains so much shredding and soloing to the point where its obnoxious, and only received recognition from videos online of people performing the song on "Guitar Hero".
In his past, Joe Satriani has released some of the greatest guitar work that the world has ever heard. And yet the music was still appealing. However, "Professor Satchafunkilus And The Musterion Of Rock" seems to be lacking some key elements to a good instrumental album. Take the single from the album, "I Just Wanna Rock" for example. The 80's hair metal-esque intro lick starts to get irritating throughout the track. And the cheezy voicebox vocals of lines such as "I wanna RAWWKKK. I wanna learn how to rawwk like you" dont help to the listening experience too much. And the slow paced ballad, "Come On Baby" sounds like the kind of song that shouldnt be instrumental. Its as if it was a 10 minute lovesong epic that has all of the lyrical verses cut out and it just skips to the solos in the bridge.
But the album does have its good sides. The second track, "Overdriver", comes off at first as a mainstream rock and roll, headband-your-skull-out track. The song continues into mysterious verses, with tremolo picking soaked under an ocean of reverb. It eventually comes to the solo, which is some classic Satch shredding. It concludes with a chorus that delivers the pleasure of the normal chorus times two. The ninth track, "Asik Veysel", (which is named after a famous turkish poet) opens up with a spectacular display of gutiar tapping. Its steady, not drenched in delay, and played over a simple drum beat rather than a power metal drummers' warm ups with their metronomes set to 300 BPM. The song is the longest on the album, clocking in at about eight minutes long. "Asik Veysel" is my favorite track off of the entire album.
As a conclusion, "Professor Satchafunkilus And The Musterion Of Rock" is a decent album released by one of the greatest musicians of our time. Joe Satriani gives us more than a three minute long, four chord song on this album. But then again, he doesnt try to create a revolutionary 9 minute epic that consists of vocals from an LSD addict, has constant soloing, and includes drums that sound like gatling guns. I would give this album a 4/5, but something tells me that it isnt the right score. But i feel that a 3.5 is too low. Therefore, "Professor Satchafunkilus And The Musterion Of Rock", I give you a 3.7/5
Reccomended Tracks:
Musterion
Overdriver
Asik Veysel
Andalusia
