Label: Favored Nations / Mascot Label Group
Release date: January 28, 2022
Production: Steve Vai
Album length: 46:41 min
Genre: Art Rock/Progressive Metal/Guitar Rock
Rating: 9.0/10
It’s been a long, long time since the “little guitar apprentice” Steve Vai was transcribing and notating sheet music for his great mentor Frank Zappa – we’re talking about some of the most rhythmically complex pieces in Zappa’s timeless catalog. Today Vai is a huge musician in his own right, one who very much lives in his own world, which means he’s shaped and established, in his own way, a one-of-a-kind musical genre that springs back to life with every new studio album. And here’s the tenth one, “Inviolate” – the newest chapter in the musical body of work you could call VAI-ification or VAI-ology. Take your pick. But the three-year “apprenticeship” under Frank Zappa still echoes in the nature of the new album’s compositions, too. Vai simply can’t escape it, and he shouldn’t. Well, at least we don’t want him to.
Even though we’ve kind of gotten used to what to expect from Steve Vai, every one of his studio releases still carries an element of surprise, a sort of potential “shock therapy”. If only because this guy gets the point of music a million miles differently from the average Earthling. That Vai “weirdness” might even explain why he and Zappa got along. You never know what to expect, or what bag of fresh, colorful ideas Vai is about to “wreck” you with, charm you with and intoxicate you with as he whisks you off to his own private musical galaxy.
With “Inviolate,” Steve Vai comes back in the light we like him best. “Modern Primitive” was definitely a “beast” of its kind, with updated old archive ideas and sketches that had been waiting for a refresh since the mid-eighties, plus a whole pile of studio guests. It was, among other things, a partly vocal album. With “Inviolate,” on the other hand, we get nine brand-new tracks, almost half the playing time, but a brilliant, all-encompassing instrumental work you can get lost in for hours and hours. Vai demands a “thick skin” when you sit down to listen to his music. That’s indisputable. It’s always been that way. There’s no other way. You have to be ready for it. This time, though, he’s put some seriously punchy, memorable phrases on the album, and amid the volleys upon volleys of the joyful dance floor of “breathtaking” improvisations from Vai’s familiar guitar “comedy,” they balance out the experimental, exploratory side of his artistry extremely well.
Every track is driven by a different guitar, or rather a completely different guitar “rig.” Right there you can hear the differences in character between the tunes. Little Pretty, for example, is one of the rare moments where Vai grabs a semi-acoustic Gretsch and lets go of his string of Ibanez guitars for a moment. Given the structure of the track and what he was trying to achieve, it becomes pretty clear why he wanted that sound. Then again, the man can’t get past his loyalty to kitsch, bling, or let’s just say “Vai-glam.” Vai does it his own way. He has for as long as we’ve known him. This time everything revolves around his new spaceship of a guitar with three necks (the bottom one is actually a four-string fretless bass). He simply told the guys at Japan’s Ibanez that he wanted a guitar that wouldn’t be conventional. Look at the album cover and it’s clear that the Japanese went absolutely brutally overboard on this “modest” request of Vai’s. They created a hydra (the guitar model: The Hydra). Down to the last kitschy detail. What Vai does with this guitar on the opening Teeth of the Hydra (see the video), which boasts one of the most impressive riffs of his career, is nuts. The way he uses the guitar, this seemingly extremely “clunky multi-string contraption,” hooked up to two amps, no less.
Over the years Vai has been getting closer and closer to the idea that the organic nature of sound is one of the foundations that define the closest possible approximation of what’s born in the association cortex and what he wants to get onto tape. What the ears inside your head hear. The production of the new album is distinctly warm and alive. Even in moments that call back to the days of “Passion And Warfare,” like Avalancha, one of the album’s lighter, if tremendously lively, tracks, the record keeps an extremely natural sound. Greenish Blues also definitely stands out on the album. It’s one of Vai’s rare excursions into the wide-open spaces of blues, and the title (probably) nods to Peter Green. The “Vai-ization” in this track brings a whole bag of notes that are way too much for the blues, but that’s how it has to be, otherwise we couldn’t talk about the “Vai-ization” of the blues. The “lovable,” all-encompassing “grimacing” of Vai’s blues improvisation, thanks to the “shock value” the listener can’t escape, is also one of the most appealing moments on the whole of “Inviolate.” Another especially fun moment is Knappstack, one of the first tracks Vai used to announce the new album. It refers to the time he had his right arm in a brace (a shoulder injury) and was in the good hands of Dr. Knapp. This jazz-rock fusion tune is played entirely with the left hand. Well, almost. The closing sound is Vai slapping the guitar with his bandaged right hand, which is the only thing in the track not done with the left.
Across this thoroughly pleasing and exciting new studio story, moments of sharper focus on jazz-rock fusion stand out within the sprawl of improvisation, like in the above-mentioned Little Pretty, but the shorter Candle Power, played entirely in a “clean sound” manner, also “unburdens” the record extremely well with its cunning transitions into motif structures. Apollo In Center, as well as Zeuss In Chains, continue the deeper sail into jazz-rock fusion territory, reaching one of the peaks of Vai’s new record in both tracks.
The compositions change character at every turn; that’s how many shifts in soundscape Vai’s inexhaustible genius conjures up. The album is literally peppered with them. So in all this abundant sonic luxury and unbridled “pranks” of a one-of-a-kind improviser, the listener doesn’t get a moment to catch their breath. That’s one of the biggest draws of Vai’s music in general, and it also gives the new tracks that well-known element of lucidity that runs through Vai’s body of work.
“Inviolate” is an unbridled musical achievement through and through. A new chapter in Vai’s experimentally wonderful “weirdness.” It radiates remarkable maturity. The excesses of “weirdness” that have accompanied Vai’s music in the past are brilliantly balanced this time by musical motifs, and the album is also extremely alive, organic and warm in production terms, with Vai somewhat more “grounded” on it than on past studio efforts. Either way, with “Inviolate” Steve Vai remains a tightrope walker of highly intelligent theater of musical expression, living in his own unique world, and among guitarists who regularly test themselves with solo albums, he’s surely a man you can hardly call anything but the biggest one-of-a-kind. Simply put – a brilliant album.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Teeth Of The Hydra
2. Zeus In Chains
3. Little Pretty
4. Candle Power
5. Apollo In Color
6. Avalancha
7. Greenish Blues
8. Knappsack
9. Sandman Cloud Mist
Musicians:
Steve Vai – guitar, keyboards, programming, bass guitar on tracks 1, 2 and 4
Philip Bynoe – bass guitar on tracks 7 and 9
Bryan Beller – bass guitar on track 3
Henrik Linder – bass guitar on track 5
Billy Sheehan – bass guitar on track 6
Terry Bozzio – drums on track 4
Vinnie Colaiuta – drums on tracks 5 and 9
Jeremy Colsson – drums on tracks 2, 3, 6 and 7
David Rosenthal – keyboards on track 5
Bob Carpenter – organ on tracks 7 and 9
Dave Weiner – rhythm guitar on track 9
