Label: Nostromo Records
Release date: 2009
Production: Grega Habič
Album length: 40.18 min
Genre: Instrumental Rock / Art Rock
Rating: 9.5/10
Grega Habič is a lone independent rider, and someone who, with his independence of musical preaching and total immunity to the jingle of coins and the rustle of green hundred-dollar bills, might even give the genre prefix “indie” its legitimacy back. Grega Habič is a guitar virtuoso, a guitar hero type who doesn’t want to be one. A guitar hero who “tiptoes” along in the footprints of Joe Satriani, Jason Becker, Paul Gilbert, etc… For Slovenia a fairly rare phenomenon, though not entirely unheard of. Our country has had quite a few flirtations with rallying along the guitar neck in its history. The first generation of such guitarists in Slovenia ranges from Marko Lemer and Andrej Janežič, to the second, slightly younger one with Andrej Gasar and Grega Habič.
“Self Destruct Sequence” is Grega’s third studio album. Sadly, I haven’t heard either of its predecessors, so as far as comparing the albums goes, this review (critique) will be somewhat crippled. On the other hand, this fact is one burden lighter, which opens the door, in wrapping up my thoughts, to a greater focus on “Self Destruct Sequence” itself.
The creator of the album in the “brainchild” sense is, of course, Grega. In the physically hands-on sense, Grega is the one who played most of the instruments on the album. A few bass lines were contributed by Serbian bassist Miša Tricković (the title track, Voodoo Sex Thing) and American Jesse Adams, who, besides vocals on Scars, added some keyboard parts and rhythm guitar. Besides guitar in every possible variation, Grega also picked up the bass guitar and the keyboards, and played around with drum programming, which sounds incredibly alive and offers a barely noticeable difference from the sound created by the flexion and extension of real muscles in the studio. A successful move, and one worth learning from.
So Grega is his own studio master. He’s capable of making an album entirely by himself (and releasing it too). The sound has tremendous volume, width and dynamics, with the contrasts between the building blocks sharply emphasized. Very important is the rock-solid drum production and the raw ring of the cymbals that fill out the picture, especially during the “thinned-out” guitar passages of Grega’s single-note solo escapades. On top of that, of course, there’s an active bass line that steers the album’s sound away from the danger of falling into one-layered, suffocating flatness.
This guitar album carries a typically American approach throughout, a vibe that flirts with the American. Some leanings toward Joe Satriani are obvious, but absolutely not distracting, because Grega walks in his own recognizable shoes as a musical artist, cultivating his own vocabulary in the process. That’s why “Self Destruct Sequence” isn’t a clone born of copying from world-renowned guitar heroes who can live off their work and enjoy great esteem, driven by a need to prove he can be as good as S. Vai, J. Satriani, J. Petrucci and the like… No. Grega doesn’t care about that; he listens to himself. That’s why the leading ideas, the main motifs, the transitional tricks and the solos he frames them with in the songs are fresh, inspired, special, and, simply put, entertain the listener the whole way through, keeping them on high alert and fully focused on the material.
Let’s take a quick run through the material. The album opens with the jolting Razor’s Edge, with dynamic, adventitious wah-wah that, a few moments later, gets embraced by red-hot metal riffing, and the album quickly and successfully swells into high riffing punch. Flashback, as the closing track, is a typical classical-guitar-style epitaph, and between those two songs lies a high share of expressive and motivic richness, reflecting Grega Habič’s incredible musical breadth, vision and expressive power as an artist. The album also has moments of higher experimental flirtation. Such is especially the outro of Voodoo Sex Thing, or, for example, A Little Love Song, while the keyboard passage right after the jazzy solo escapade in the middle of Beyond Redemption could be tagged with a prog tendency. Wonderin’ doesn’t hide its jazzy streak, which successfully flirts with a “dreamy” acoustic atmosphere (especially the intro) and turns somewhere in the middle toward bluesy territory. The contrasts between the bass guitar, the voluminous drums and the clean, natural guitar tone work wonderfully in this song, and they’re present too in the lazily funky Scars, where Jesse Adams’ rapping proves an excellent and extremely tasteful (very welcome) choice. Maybe blues waters are precisely the biggest thorn in the side of classically schooled guitarists, as shown by the rather sterile-sounding intro (Hendrix’s whisper of guitar phrases straight from heaven) in Vicious Circle, which the continuation quickly dispels by serving up, well, everything else. Great development and unfolding of events, stringing together varied yet witty motifs that the guy shakes out of his sleeve in layers. That last sentence, of course, characterizes the majority of this record, which carries, at every step, a quality you find less and less on albums today. The attributes of shocking unpredictability in how things unfold and thrilling creative wit. And Grega Habič is at the same time a man who knows how to keep an absolute red thread running through the songs, so they don’t suffer from the fragmentation syndrome he could easily have landed in had he given absolute priority on the album to shooting off ultrasonically fast solos from every possible position! That’s why “Self Destruct Sequence” is immensely accessible to every ear, and not just the gourmet ones – the most spoiled.
Grega Habič has no motive whatsoever for reaping any kind of commercial success. This work is the fruit of complete honesty with himself, so you can rest assured that what’s written on “Self Destruct Sequence” is the most this musician can possibly offer you. If the whole thing carries real expressive depth, a hefty essence of the very spirit of the form it creates, serving up a unique, hard-to-replicate stamp of the moment captured by the developmental step that is the album “Self Destruct Sequence”, then you can rest assured this is yet another standout from Slovenia that will most likely go deeply overlooked on home turf, while abroad, labels and the critical music crowd alike would be tripping over themselves for it! Hats off to Grega for his great courage and for shooting with a full set of balls!
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Razor’s Edge
2. Self Destruct Sequence
3. Voodoo Sex Thing
4. Scars
5. Revolution
6. Vicious Circle
7. Beyond Redemption
8. A Little Love Song
9. Wonderin’
10. Flashback
Lineup:
Grega Habič – guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, drum programming
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Jesse Adams – vocals (track no. 4), rhythm guitar (track no. 2), keyboards (tracks no. 2, 4, 7, 9, 10)
Miša “Tricko” Tricković – bass guitar (tracks no. 2 and 3)
