Credits:

Impellitteri

Description:

Like the non-evil twin of Yngwie Malmsteen, veteran neo-classical six-string magician Chris Impellitteri is one of those rare guitar heroes capable of restraint when he sets his mind to it — no mean feat in a category virtually defined by noodling excess. Indeed, his attention to actual songcraft, as opposed to the flurry of notes contained in that small portion of music called the solo, is refreshing and inspiring, and leave one pining for the good old days of Gary Moore’s metallic period, or even Malmsteen himself before he ran out of song ideas. Anyway, as hinted at in the title, Pedal to the Metal finds Impellitteri’s eponymous band tackling numerous heavy metal subgenres — not just his neo-classical specialty, of which the only clear examples here are the power metal-leaning “The Writing on the Wall” and the excellent “Destruction,” which is an obvious knock-off of Malmsteen’s “I’ll See