Zakk Wylde
Book Of Shadows

THE REVIEW

That the human soul is a Janus where one face laughs at the other's crying is said by works like "Book Of Shadows"; the only work attributed directly to Zakk Wylde reveals its deepest and most melancholic side, which in my opinion is the truest and most sincere.

Not a work contaminated by his usual thrash registers, deadly solos, and riffs, but an immensely heartfelt album where ballads and acoustic moments dominate almost all 50 minutes. The whole atmosphere of the album is completely marked by an intimate and dark flavor; the inner images of the artwork are very eloquent in this regard; above all stands out a Manichaean and Mazdeist conception of existence; in a mystical and dark background like the blackest of nights, two opposing images reign; the demon and the virgin, absolutely revealing expressions of the "part" of the soul expressed by Zakk in this album.

It is as if the demonic angel from New Jersey wants us to reflect on the absolute duplexity of situations and (in this case) of his songs; evil is simya Dei; endowed with its own cherubs, gendarmes, sacristans, ministers, or simply ordinary men, it shines with brilliance even without virtuosity. Moreover, in the "iconographic" background of the most particular images of the CD, there are even more picturesque references to this idea; among all, I was struck by an 18th-century image representing the legend of Tartini's Devil's Trill; Mephistopheles who "grants" in a dream to the Italian violinist the most beautiful litany that has ever been played with a violin: too bad that upon waking, the musician will spend sleepless nights in the vain attempt to transcribe it just as he dreamed it, but he only manages to propose a pale remnant of what his ears had "heard" in the other dimension…

Must the beauty of these songs justify itself in the same way? Hard to say, but certainly, this "Book of Shadows" is a complete, linear, and truly disarming work of intensity, where a musician with a damn southern heart shelves his immense guitar skills to "compress" them in favor of songs where the masters are the acoustic guitar, piano, and harmonica (needless to say, except for drums and bass, here Zakk is a multi-instrumentalist). The heavy moments are reduced to the bone, and the deadly solos are simply hinted at here and there; the electric guitar lines, instead, where they erupt do so almost without "interfering," but rather perhaps granting the song that extra value impossible to a "normal" musician. In any case (and this is the really important thing), even without the expression of that superior technique, almost all the songs on this CD retain their beauty intact, because unlike many "guitar heroes," Zakk's goal is not "amazement" but to put his deepest emotions to music; that this is done by one of the greatest guitarists in the metal scene is almost a "detail" on an album like this; its beauty, a bit like female beauty, immediately persuades the human soul of its own accord.

It is truly difficult to isolate the best moments of this album because almost every piece of it is permeated by an evanescent dreamy, surreal, and intimately melancholic background. From this point of view, the most "felt" moments are undoubtedly "Too Numb To Cry," the sweet "I Thank You Child" dedicated to his "Zakkino," or the opener "Between Heaven and Hell," a moment that is certainly the album's most country; specifically characterizing it is the use of a very particular guitar technique, absolutely foreign by itself to the metal world and belonging to country music; I'm referring to the so-called chicken pickin, a playing style very similar to that of Albert Lee, one of Zakk's reference artists.
We must not forget that almost the entire album is permeated by very West-Coast melodies, from the 70s. However, there are not only "Neil Young" moments in this "Book of Shadows": despite the persistence of the melancholic stance, the six-string master of the album is still one of the best metal guitarists. And so the recourse to the minor pentatonic scale performed with alternate picking creates the "usual" (and distinctive) unexpected attack in what I think are the most beautiful songs on the album: I am referring to the superlative triptych "Sold My Soul, Road Back Home, and Way Beyond Empty": three semi-acoustic ballads "electrified" by a goosebumps-inducing acrobatic coda.

A separate mention should be made for "1000 Miles Away," where amid sounds very close to 'Soundgarden' or even more to 'Alice in Chains'; it is, however, the album's most truly metallic piece; nestled in a hyper-galactic guitar progression, it reminds us that the six-string in this album is not played by human hands… .
A musical synderesis, a perfect alchemy of melancholy flavored with the most sublime (and at the same time discreet) technicalities; this is "Book of Shadows"; listen without considering who plays and sings it… it will occasionally remind you of itself… .. When an artist technically so endowed manages to convince simply by melody, almost shedding his talents, then in my opinion, one can truly begin to touch the musical empyrean…

Dedicated to the shining memory of Syd Barrett; goodbye, unaware piper from whom it all began… .