Jeff Loomis Plains of Oblivion 2012

For fans of shredding metal, here another piece for celebration. Plains of Oblivion (curiously if this any reference to Elder Scroll series?) is out now, a solo instrumental, a shred album by Jeff Loomis.

Jeff Loomis now is a free guitarist without his glorious band Nevermore. With this in mind, we hope for a better prepared solo album, but as my first spin of this long waited CD, the expectation is a little bit blur. Mostly because Jeff once again put more emphasized on the song's heavy-ness rather than went to my melodious comfort zone. As in his previous solo, Zero Order Phase, this album marked a very fast song, fast drum and the shredding is naturally went fast. Out of this, one can not expected a sweet or power metal-neo classical style of shredding here. This is perhaps match with Jeff's Nevermore background.

The present of multi shredding stars here is one of the highlight. Marty Friedman open with Mercurial, for what Marty is, the exotic scales master seems not went well with Jeff's fast song here. Something forced, imho. For The Ultimatum, Tony MacAlpine is an all around shredder and which is quite okay with the song. Jeff exclusively done the next Escape Velocity, but the vocalized songs, Tragedy And Harmony is, again I didn't quite grab the anything special here. The other star to highligh is Chris Poland's track Continuum Drift, which is done in somewhat Chris style in his solo Return of Metalopolis , which is one of my favorite track. There is also presence Norwegian's all round composer/guitarist Ihsahn, but again his track Surrender with death metal singing style is not very much cup of me.

Nevertheless, plenty of shredding to enjoy here. Obviously the style in this album a little bit outside my comfort zone, but fans of Nevermore and progressive instrumental will enjoy the most here.

Jeff Loomis - Plains of Oblivion 2012
buy it here at AMAZON

1. "Mercurial" (featuring Marty Friedman)
2. "The Ultimatum" (featuring Tony MacAlpine)
3. "Escape Velocity"  
4. "Tragedy And Harmony" (featuring Christine Rhoades)
5. "Requiem For The Living" (featuring Attila Vörös)
6. "Continuum Drift" (featuring Chris Poland)
7. "Surrender" (featuring Ihsahn)
8. "Chosen Time" (featuring Christine Rhoades)
9. "Rapture"  
10. "Sibylline Origin"

Jeff Loomis Plains of Oblivion