John 5 - God Told Me To

As far as I'm concerned their are few six string masters that deserve the praise they receive. John 5 is one of the rare few that actually are guitar gods and he proves over and over and over again that he's on a plateau all by himself just under the master of all guitarists Steve Vai on his 2012 album God Told Me To.

The opening metallic shred fest "Welcome To Violence" lays the ground work for what is probably John's best solo album so far. The instrumental cover of "Beat It" while being great could be eliminated and replaced with an original in my opinion. When John does his best picking is on the acoustic masterpiece "The Castle" which is epic. The melody of the song dances and skips and flutters around in your ears tickling every little hair.

He repeats this brilliance on the acoustic guitar a few more times each one being as good as the last which when you reach perfection that is as good as it gets and that happens in the composition aspect a lot on this album.

A heavy thumping "Killafornia" is another of the terrific writing moments on God Told Me To. He actually doesn't write a bad song or give a less than stellar performance on each track. This is the best guitar record I've heard since Alien Love Secrets by Steve Vai. Even though Paul Gilbert has made some drool making moments on his solo albums now and again he's not made an all instrumental album as charismatic as this one and neither has Satriani for that matter.

This album never gets boring or stale or samey which many other artists in the shred arena do all the time. This is musical and fun sometimes dark and brooding with aggression bursting from the music but then other times its sweet, happy and uplifting that creates a very relaxing feeling. You know an album is great when you listen to it three or four times in a row. This album has achieved that more than once today. I listened to it about nine times today beginning to end and as I write this I'm still listening to it finding with more listens I like it even more.

Guitar players should be all over this record just to understand how to write great instrumental guitar driven songs with diversity and passion.