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1991 |
1. Cut To The Chase |
| Reviews Review by Eric Vandenberg: Definitely another candidate for my personal "Top Three of Steve Morse-CD's". This one sounds so fresh and energetic, it's pure fun to listen to it ! The "Guitar FOr The Practising Musician"-mag said that "Southern Steel" is for 1991 what "Passion & Warfare" ( Steve Vai, and IMHO one of the most important guitar albums of all time ) was for 1990 ! Let's go through it ! The album starts with the uptempo rocker "Cut To The Chase", which, to me, is the younger brother of "Cruise Missile"....great band-work, a little tapping- duel between Dave and Steve, and the guitar-work in here is a statement about the general guitar work on "Southern Steel"...AWESOME ! Next one is "Simple Simon", a great "good mood" rock-song. This one has many different sequences that change a lot...the hard-rocking intro riff, then a picked clean passage, followed by the great main- melody. The song was featured quite alot in Howard Stern's radio- show a few years back ! Following is the very atmospheric "Vista Grande", which could have been a part of "High Tension Wires" also. After the lean mean groove-machine "Sleaze Factor" the classical- inspired intro of "Battle Lines" amazes the listener. Again, Steve unleashes w whole bunch of great melodies. The virtuous clean intro of "Southern Steel" leaves no question: A cool song with some heavy rhythm, an amazing melody, some shred- ding and a beautiful clean picking-passage at the end. Believe it or not, but this little passage at the end is my favourite moment on this CD. Next is the "Wolf Song" with it's quite dramatic intro...which resolves into a very moody song. Beautiful melodies and little passages are put together to make up a great instrumental ballad. Another one of my faves. After the high-energy uptempo-rock of "Weekend Overdrive", Steve leads us into the 70's/80's-pomp rock-parody "Arena Rock". An almost cliche-like riff opens this song, which definitely develops into something else, more interesting shortly after. The album ends with the amazing classical etude "Point Counterpoint", a duet with Dave LaRue. I've seen a live-performance of this piece on video, and although it was hard to believe, Dave and Steve are able to nail this one live without many changes in the arrangement ! If you'd like to get into the SMB, if you need a modern introduction to their music, you should definitely check out this one: A perfect mix of everything that makes the SMB what it is...one of the best trios in the biz ever ! Guitarists definitely should limit their enjoyment of the album to little doses...everything else might lead to destruction of your instrument by yourself ! |