Artist: Dave Martone
   Title: When The Aliens Come
   Label: Lion Music

Ahhh guitar albums, the reviewers curse or reviewers heaven.  They're either over twiddled or over stretched, or just simply superb examples of guitar virtuoso performers stretching the six string to its limits.  The new album ‘When The Aliens Come’ by Canadian guitar wiz Dave Martone is I’m pleased to say the latter.

Martone takes this humble six string and puts it into a time machine and what returns is a futuristic look at the whole guitar sound.

Dave himself describes the whole concept of the album as one where he tries to “envision what music of the future might be.  Trying to imagine that I could hop in some alien space ship 400 years from now and see what’s playing on their iPod equivalent!”.

The album is just that, a vision of the future.  A vision which opens up with ‘Starz Scarz’, which is quite a heavenly balance between the tribal electro tones and the heavier more thumbing metal tones of the now, with a touch of Spanish/jazz guitar fusion thrown in to the mix for effect.

Things continue with a little funky number entitled ‘Flatulation Farm’, a heady mix of funk guitar and space age keyboards, with some rampaging bass rhythms.  Keeping the album flowing is another bass ridden track ‘The Four Horsemen’.  This this time Martone shows why he got polled as one of the four underground shred gods in the January 06 issue of Guitar One magazine, as he really carves his way through the fret board on this one.

The album continues to defy the usual guitar album logic as Martone uncovers a new depth of fortitude and strength with the excellent ‘Really Now!’, another heavy mix of traditional metal guitar interwoven with the more intricate funk/jazz fusion.

Dave brings a little Eastern spice into the mix with the oddly titled ‘Mike Crows Mailbox of Doom’, before once more showing those what those fiery fingers can do with the shred fest that is ‘Fumble Fingers’.  A track which would have us mere mortals digits grounded down to mince if we tried too produce the same amazing riffs.

Then it's time to slow things down with the moody tones of ‘Pung Yao’, a gentle repose from the more intense guitar that has gone before.  This more gentile side of Martone’s guitar playing is carried on with the melodic ‘Angel’ and the Country stylings of ‘O My God I’m Swelling’.

However, it's the more heavier tones of the likes of next track ‘Double FF’s’ and “Maneemanaw’ (which comes complete with Terminator intro) that really make this album for me.  Even the electronic dance mix of ‘Techno Bee’z is fantastic as Martone puts his own spin on ‘The Flight of The Bumble Bee’.

The album closes with the title track ‘When The Aliens Come’, a track that is awash with subtle mood and tempo changes, from the sublime to the down right funky to the more conceptual, this track epitomizes what Martone had for the initial idea and one which rounds off a quite unique and sometimes far flung look in the future of the guitar sound and shows just what a guitar is capable of in the right hands.

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