I find it rather offensive how everyone and their dog can't seem to help but praise these guitarists for being insane shredders, unbelievably talented, guitar gods, etc. ESPECIALLY since i'm sure none of these people saying this have any real interest in that kind of playing and really have no idea how many players out there absolutely, no holds barred, fuck-you-right-up SLAUGHTER Herman and Sam.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2qY_Rn_qKshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oii1EF7DnFMThey are nearly consistently like this. There is a LOT of editing going on in the studio on these tunes. Now, i really don't care about them doing that, as i'm not that interested in seeing them live, and for me it's about how the song SOUNDS, not about the mechanics of how the sound came about. HOWEVER, when i was a teenager all i wanted to learn was to play guitar with perfect shred technique, and i spent YEARS looking for players to study and model my playing after. Watching Herman Li and Sam Toteman playing in videos like the above is an absolute JOKE, and it irks me so badly that the woefully ignorant are so willing to throw out as much praise as possible for their technique when it's EXTREMELY poor in comparison to the likes of Paul Gilbert, George Bellas, Greg Howe, Andy Timmons, Guthrie Govan, Shawn Lane, etc... The slop is nearly unbearable. They do NOT have good technique, and the things they play fast are so LINEAR that it's insulting to the "shredders" who have spent so much of their time getting away from such linear, scalar playing and instead trying to actually have some kind of PHRASING in their playing... which is, by the way, so much harder to do. playing scales with 16ths at 200 bpm is infinitely easier than playing something with something actually going on at that speed.
Anyway, my rant is over. This CD is pretty fun to listen to, even if the songs do tend to blend together, and they already released this album once and called it Sonic Firestorm. but PLEASE, for the love of GOD, stop spreading this vicious rumor that these guys are some kind of uber advanced guitar players. They are pretty good, but they play out of their zone ALL the time on record and it shows through in any live performance video i've ever seen. It's embarassing.
