Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: MacAlpine, Tony
Label: Sun Dog Records
Release: 2017
Runtime: 30:04
Rating: 4/5
Tony MacAlpine is yet another guitar hero who went all in on a solo career by putting the guitar at the center of his musical universe and vocabulary. Over the years, with wild stunts and top-shelf guitar virtuosity that never loses its thread or its inspiration, he’s spoiled the more demanding music fans in particular, or let’s just call them guitar rock fans, and in his case guitar metal fans too.
Before the new album, Tony went through a brutal health ordeal: he was diagnosed with stomach cancer, and it was seriously bad. Right after he announced that things were under control, he had to go back for another round of chemo. But clearly his will and strength, and his body too, survived the hellish test. The man is back on his feet, he’s chased off the evil spirits, and the new album is also an »imprint« of what he’s been through over the last two years.
From »Concrete Gardens« to »Chrome Castles« – that’s how you could describe the step Tony has taken between the previous album and the new one. This one is tailor-made for every fan of his playing, the ones who’ve followed him loyally ever since his outstanding debut »Edge Of Insanity«.
The man sticks to his trademark musical premise on this album too. As always, what shines through most obviously is his command of most of the guitar repertoire and his classical polish. The album is once again soaked in neoclassical guitar finesse, which keeps us hooked from the first second to the last. He backs every motif with pronounced guitar riffs and the occasional »shredding« excursion, so this record is mostly full of direct sharpness too, decidedly sinewy in its phrasing and decked out with rushing distortion, which guarantees the whole thing is properly, thoroughly metallized. In his soloing, Tony naturally drifts into jazz territory as well, and he fuses it masterfully and with incredible feel into the otherwise »textbook canon of classical music«. At moments Tony is also deliberately chaotic, which is no longer news for him but a trademark, and he steers it skillfully enough that the listener often has no idea which way a given track is going to go. That’s the element of unpredictability he built into his work especially during his apprenticeship years hanging out with Steve Vai, who is famous for his occasional detours into the downright »weirdness« of guitar playing.
Tony once again played the keyboards and guitar himself, and took care of the programming too. The bombastic, explosive rhythmic drive of the album comes from Hungarian drummer Gergő Borlai (Scott Henderson, Gary Willis, Hiram Bullock) and bassist Pete Griffin (Generation Axe Tour, Giraffe Tongue Orchestra, Zappa Plays Zappa). They’re both seasoned, versatile musicians whose cunning skills convinced Tony to offer them a spot on the album!
Some of the motifs, which the unbreakable shredder Tony again played on seven- and eight-string guitar “paddles”, he’s artfully backed up with keyboards as usual, or placed in a spot in the composition that matters for building the mood, especially in the intros of the tracks. MacAlpine plays with such unbelievable zeal once again, as if he were only just putting out his first album. And that’s the whole point. That big heart and fire in everything he takes on. Let’s hope the road brings the man to European stages and that he gets to present this really lovely new studio effort to a European audience. That’s the least the freshly composed material deserves.
Tony MacAlpine – Chrome Castles (official audio):
Lineup
Tony MacAlpine – guitar, keyboards, programming
Pete Griffin – bass guitar
Gergő Borlai – drums
Production
Tony MacAlpine
Track list
1. Chrome Castles
2. Electric Illusionist
3. Synthetic Serenity
4 Death of Roses
5. Axiomatic Jewels
6. Entropy
7. Shundor Prithibi
