Anyone who’s ever learned an instrument knows the feeling. We’ve all been there, that single depressing moment when you click play on the youtube video, the slow realization of “holy fuck he’s harmonizing by himself on two necks”, then the creeping jealousy of “goddamm, I want one of those double necked axes too”, up until the withering agony of “fuck it, no one can play that fast. I’ll never play that fast.” This, my friends, is Michael Angelo Batio, voted the No. 1 Shredder of All Time (and of any universe, presumably) by Guitar One magazine. He writes columns full of depressing mindfucks that you’ll never be able to keep up with. He taught Tom Morello how to play guitar rather than just fuck around with cool sounds, and he taught Mark Tremonti that if you weren’t marketing to 13 year old girls and old Christian grannies you might need to actually learn some techniques as far as guitar playing goes. He made Nitro’s Freight Train video actually pull the “so-bad-it’s-good” stunt off with his over-the-top, musical masturbatory four-necked guitar solo. He makes aspiring guitarists all over the world pull their hair out and bite their nails down to the skin because they’ll just never be that good.

So yeah, Batio can play. But is it worth it buying an actual album of shredding? Batio’s first four albums are, in this reviewer’s humble opinion, boring as fuck. All instrumental, all written by Batio himself, who seems to suffer from a similar disease as the one that plagues Yngwie Malmsteen, namely the inability to write good songs despite jaw-dropping technique. So it is entirely to Batio’s credit that for his previous album, Hands Without Shadows, he included only two original compositions, focusing instead on shredalicious covers and “tributes” (mash-ups of segments from famous pieces of the artist he is paying homage to). This trend is reinforced in his latest, Hands Without Shadows 2 - Voices, which features only one track that is both an original composition and entirely instrumental. The rest of the album consists entirely of “tributes”, including pieces such as Cemetary Gates and Cowboys From Hell by Pantera, Layla by Eric Clapton, For Whom The Bell Tolls and Master Of Puppets by Metallica (with Mark Tremonti and Bill Peck guest starring), Running With The Devil and Eruption by Van Halen, Symphony Of Destruction by Megadeth (featuring Vinnie Moore and George Bellas), All Along The Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix, and to top it off a full cover of Ozzy Osbourne’s You Can’t Kill Rock N’Roll, as a tribute to Randy Rhoads.

It’s a fun album, overall, and vocalist Warren Dunlevy, Jr. has a decent voice, managing to pull off a passable impression of Mustaine for the Megadeth tribute. The guest spots are cute, especially the über-macho shredding of David Schankle, formerly of Manowar. The songs are basically guitar-centred re-arrangements of the originals, with Batio throwing in some lightspeed scales wherever he can find an inch of space. It’s fun to listen to, but unless you’re a guitar player yourself, ultimately quite dull. So, final verdict: If you’re a guitar player, and don’t have fragile self-esteem, then by all means, buy this album. If not, you’d be better off spending your money on the new Anubis Gate.