OK To Start I'm sure all of you have heard of the guitar greats like Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, and Joe Satriani, well this guy puts them all to shame, if not just for the slick production of his albums, you can hear ALL the instruments and they all have amazing parts, and some of the recording techniques he uses are just crazy, but I'll get into those later.
The Dave Martone Band for "A Demon's Dream" is
Lead Guitar: Dave Martone
Rhythm Guitar:
Bass:
Drums:
(if anyone know who these people are please tell me so i can add them to my review, or tell me if Dave possibly did all the recording himself)
Now, Onwards to the Highlilghts
Track 1: Big Church: This song starts out with some pretty heavy sounding rhythm guitar and some lead fills sprinkled in, but as soon as it kicks in you can hear the subtleties of his work, like how he keeps a whammy pedal an octave down, low in the mix any time he records heavy rhythm guitar. This song gets monotonous fast but the ending is cool (4/5)
Track 4: Country Maniac: This song is just perfect, its a balls out guitar spotlight (not that the rest of the album isn't) but in a way that will make you go, "wow that was interesting" not "jesus christ I've heard those 10000000 notes before, but better" he does a country/rockabilly style solo but the only thing in the background is an egg shaker. Also here's another one of his recording tricks, he took his signal when he recorded this track and split it one side clean, one dirty, so one side of the headphones gets the percussive attack and the other gets the smooth sustain (5/5)
Track 5: Demon Fetal Harvest: This song is crazy, there are just so many layers to it, it doesn't really get going for awhile, but when it does, its amazing, it has a very middle eastern sound to it that I find very interesting. Also there's one arpeggio in the song that gets repeated a few times that just brings you to another world, I believe that intervals are root, maj3rd, sharp4th, perfect5th, maj7th. its just so dreamy I'll stop rambling but this song gets totally surreal at points (5/5)
Track 9: Goodbye Pork Pie Hat: This song is great, if you've hezrd the original by Charles Mingus, but if you haven't than it really sounds sort of like a generic Dave Martone song, but then again if you've nver heard Dave Martone before, and want to get into some jazz, than you can kill 2 birds with one stone here (3.5/5)
Track 11: Panemenco: This song is just ***in weird, it goes between being elevator grade music and this totally heavy, metal. Then occasionally both will play at the same time, and for some reason it makes sense. It gets a little draggy by the end, but whatever its still a great song. (4/5)
Track 12: A Demons Dream: This is one way to go about ending an album, its just 1:20 of acoustic randomness and demonic vocal noises. I guess he was trying to purvey what "a demon's dream" could sound like but really I just end the CD after "Panemenco" I only reviewed this track because I didn't want to give you guys false hope that I didn't tell you about a kick ass title track. (2/5)
I gave this entire album a 3.5, my biased score would be a 5 but looking at the songs individually really lets me see that as a whole its not that great, but seeing Dave Martone live on the other hand is something that would be off the charts, so if he ever tours near you SEE HIM, he will blow your mind and make you practice your instrument until your hands fall off.
