Impellitteri
Stand In Line

Chris Impellitteri, for those who live for the metal of the 80s, is a kind of meteor in the heavy-neo-classical metal scene. Not that he's less famous now, but his band, despite having this brilliant guitarist in its ranks, never achieved noteworthy success.

Yet it seems strange: Impellitteri, and his band indeed, the Impellitteri, used to write songs that followed the trend of those years. In the 80s, the metal we love to call neo-classical, inaugurated by the Swedish maestro Yngwie Malmsteen, was all the rage. In those years, every guitarist, promptly discovered by Mike Varney, patron of shredding, made their success with harmonic minor scales and atmospheres that winked at Paganini. The album in question is a brief summary of the career of this incredibly fast guitarist and his band. An album that, beyond the few admirers of Chris's virtuosity, says very little to the metal, neo-classical, and shred scene.

"Stand in Line" saw the light in 1988 (therefore in the full neo-classical and shred boom) and starts with the title track: a fairly standard rhythm and a powerful and screaming voice just enough. The showy virtuosity of Impellitteri immediately catches the ear: characterized by a rather unpleasant sound, rich in delay and echoes, his solos are exactly what I expected, with elements heavily borrowed from Malmsteen's music, but extremized in speed. The following "Since you've been gone" has a slower pace; it's easy to imagine how it was a single or a track specifically written to make an impact on the radio. Melodic with a fairly rhythmic and calm beat and a solo that doesn't fail to showcase gratuitous virtuosity and speed. "Secret Lover" is quite famous in the metal environment. Equipped with tired and overused rhythmic and compositional standards, it presents the usual neo-classical section both in the vocal melodies and in the solo, based on familiar progressions taken from the works of baroque classical musicians.

From here on, we will hear tracks of truly low quality. First of all, the desecration of "Somewhere over the rainbow." Exclusively instrumental, Impellitteri doesn't fail to smother this melody with unnecessary solos. "Tonight I Fly" features the same rhythms as the previous tracks, as does "White & Perfect." "Leviathan" continues with strong and slow rhythms, reminiscent of a march, and Impellitteri gives us a first solo that is quite slow and melodic before launching into virtuosity. "Goodnight & Goodbye" seems like I've heard it before, on the same album. The album closes with an instrumental track, quite pointless and without a real evolution except for virtuosity characterized by the usual sweeps, entitled "Playing with fire." "Stand in Line" ends like this. There is a lot of talk about this guitarist and his band. But what his band and style are really missing are the interesting ideas that made great contemporaries like Tafolla, Gilbert, Kotzen, and Bettencourt.

Despite his flashy and seemingly perfect technique, Impellitteri and his band are a project without real strictly qualitative value, making it suitable for listening only to those who truly appreciate the acrobatic solos of Chris Impellitteri.