Jeez Louise it’s one of these. Nope despite the whacky lettering of the album title it is not nu-metal, though for once I wish it were. This is the work of Steve Senes; guitar virtuoso and winner of awards such as the 2009 Guitar Player final, the real one as opposed to those on gaming platforms. We did have an initiation rite for new writers joining our team once upon a time and sent them one of the regular as clockwork guitar playing maestro CD’s that grace our presence every couple of months. The problem was, we never heard from them again and after numerous attempts at getting reviews back found ourselves blocked from emailing them. Now it is just easier to make sure budding new scribes can string a sentence together, know what they are talking about, meet deadlines, drink their weight in beer and tolerate music as diverse as Saxon to Nightwish. We hope we have at least partly succeeded and in doing so have had to partake in reviewing such albums as this as an editorial affair. Enough is enough and Mr Senes is going to be the very last artist of his ilk to feature on these pages.
I am not denying the fact that he can play in the slightest, he can and has proved so admirably over this near hour (and of course it has completely been played more than once) of music. The crux of the problem is, that this is so mind numbingly tedious and dull it beggars belief, it is the equivalent of watching paint dry and sounds EXACTLY like every other album by EVERY other guitar player I have heard. This is all one big exercise in “look at me, I can play a guitar.” It sticks to a formula that is tried and tested with wailing guitar work on opener ‘The Swami’ going about things in an upbeat fashion to try and make out this is dynamic and interesting, to injecting pathos on third track ‘Ruth’ as the weeping guitar ballad of the album, by now I want to slit my wrists.
The Californian maestro not only plays guitar but programmes everything else and as the album progresses we take into account that he can embrace other styles apart from rock, there is a touch of neo-classicalism here, some funky licks, some blues and jazz there a bit of 70s boogie and naturally some flamenco, after all it simply would be complete without a touch of bleeding flamenco.
I fail to understand why someone as talented as this would fail to go and form a band to show of their talents, perhaps it is that ‘look at me’ need for complete control. Perhaps there really is a market for this sort of stuff somewhere. Perhaps there will be scores of people writing in to complain about this review and beg us not to stop reviewing such artists in the future. Until that happens we will be retiring from the likes of Mr Senes scene and all those who ride upon it.
http://www.myspace.com/9yu
http://www.senesmusic.com
