Joe Satriani - Shockwave Supernova (2015)

He is one of most celebrated rock guitar instrumentalist of our age, Joe Satriani, has reach his 15th studio album with Shockwave Supernova. Although Satch begin his journey 30 years ago in the '80s, his music seems keep coming and coming. Unstoppable Moments as he describe in his previous album. In Shockwave Supernova a new concept introduce, and re-introduce. Shockwave Supernova as explained by Satch in the Youtube, Behind the Album episodes, are mostly materials taken from Unstoppable Moments. They are rewrite by  the moment Joe Satriani stopover in Singapore. One of other things that very interesting about S.S. is the backing band. Satch recruited the Aristocrats to back him up! Well, minus Guthrie Govan, only (Guthrie actually got his part in G4 tour organized by Joe). Marco Minnemann and Brian Beller are new gun to Joe, they are joined by long time Mike Keneally to form a new super band. The result quickly come to the surface, as the album sees many new ideas that harder to find in previous album.

Already the first song,  Shockwave Supernova, see the new sound coming in. This entrance song highlight is about the classic arpeggios-theme licks backed with Marco's progressive drummings. Satch still very much own his game with immediately Lost in a Memory, which is easily identified by fans with his Satch-style leading melody. There are 15 songs in this album. Those who traditionally attached to Joe Satriani, I can mentioned out are: In My Pocket, a satch-bogie one, San Francisco Blue, old timer bluesy tunes, and the flag ship song, If There Is No Heaven, brings us back to the standard Satriani's "catchy" simple drum beat. The other songs, we see many some fresh ideas. Its begin with Crazy Joe, where Marco got his first "difficult" task to handle the guitar that start with scattered blues lick to 16th notes. Marco's drumming come more frontal in On Peregrine Wings, where the double snare accent become the main theme on that song. While Mike Keneally got his keyboard highlight in Keep On Movin', although the main theme is kind of re-cycled old Satriani song we have listened in the past. Other interesting stuff keep coming, All Of My Life is pretty sweet all out mellow song in term of band playing, the percussion quite distinguished here. A Phase I'm Going Through see that reaching tenth song didn't mean the song writing become lessened in quality, in fact this song see another good song writing stuff that force us to listen it up to the end.

In short, this is a stunning album from Joe. This album benefit from intense song writing and backed with so much energy from Marco, Brian and Mike. The cliche about music chemistry is surely there. Hard to find one specific song that stand out because they all do. This album surely come above expectation. We can say that Joe Satriani's style is predictable, ehem, this album still easy to see that happened, but now with lot of details that make those familiar tunes become really awesome to revisited. Bring this one to your music station and let the Professor show us how the amazing things about guitar to be done.

Metal Harem class: ********** nine stars out of ten

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Joe Satriani - Shockwave Supernova (2015)

01. Shockwave Supernova
02. Lost In A Memory
03. Crazy Joey
04. In My Pocket
05. On Peregrine Wings
06. Cataclysmic
07. San Francisco Blue
08. Keep On Movin'
09. All Of My Life
10. A Phase I'm Going Through
11. Scarborough Stomp
12. Butterfly And Zebra
13. If There Is No Heaven
14. Stars Race Across The Sky
15. Goodbye Supernova


    Joe Satriani – guitar
    Mike Keneally – guitar, keyboard
    Marco Minnemann – drums
    Bryan Beller – bass
    John Cuniberti - producer