GALACTIC EMPIRE-Episode II

Rise Records

Darth Vader on lead guitar? Thought he walked around with a magic sword? I must confess that I have never been into Stars Wars and all the various movies. Sure, if you have not heard of Star Wars you obviously have not been on this planet for the last decades but one way or another I only saw a few movies. This group is dressed up to the maximum and it looks very nice and authentic but then we have seen it all before with Slipknot, Gwar and Lordi, so is this shocking? No, not really. The music is purely instrumental, the song titles are based upon Stars Wars themes and titles like ,,March At The Jedi Temple’’. And it is not bad at all! Our Darth Vader is an inventive dude on the six strings playing it loud, fast and most of the time in the vein of people like Malmsteen, Vai, Sammy Berelli and Chris Impellitteri with every now and then taking the foot of the throttle and adding a bit of melody towards the music. If you are into this kind of metal/rock I suppose ‘Empire II’ is an album you will probably appreciate. Personally I prefer the latest Joe Satriani CD. For me Galactic Empire is a bit too one dimensional but then I am not a Star Wars connoisseur am I?