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Jonas Tamas is very talented guitarist from Hungary and “Sharp Guitars from a Flat Planet” is his debut instrumental release. Jonas’ influences are obviously trenched in metal and instrumental rock guitar. His fast Satriani-esque legato phrases fuse into fast picking sections reminiscent of John Petrucci and Yngwie Malmsteen but Jonas has much more to offer than speedy playing and flashy tapping, Jonas has a some great melodic ideas too. Below is a summary of some of the tracks from the album:

The opening track “Zenith” has an interesting intro riff that uses some interesting polyrhythms with 2 virtual bars of 7/8 followed by 4 16th notes to make up the rest of the backing track 4/4 driving rhythm. This track really sets the scene for the album with good melodies and tight rhythm playing.

“Golden” in Jonas’ own words is a tribute to neoclassical players of the 80’s such as Yngwie, Tony Macalpine. I thought it was like a modern take on Jason Becker Perpetual Burn era especially the harmonized arpeggio melodies, although the chugging rhythms are a lot heavier. The breakdown in the middle of the track shows a more bluesy/fusiony phrasing side to Jonas which is a nice contrast to the rest of the track.

There is a 7 string used on “Tight Squeeze” which gives the track a really moody feel, although the melody skips over the top with some impressively fluid tapped passages. Lots of Lydian passages which work so well in rock and metal.

“I Feel Sorry” is a nice change at the halfway point of the album with a slow tempo, piano backing and nice crunchy/clean guitars to begin with, shame these didn’t continue for the whole track I thought they suited it much better than the heavy overdriven guitar. The idea behind this track is that the guitars panned left and right are having a conversation with each other, again a nice idea which I would have liked continued for the entire track. The guitars with less gain seemed to tease a different style of playing from Jonas, more bluesy which I like a lot.

“Locrian Locusts” has some interesting melodies due to Jonas’ use of the “Lydian natural sixth” scale, a mode of the Harmonic Minor scale and the Locrian mode. Much darker sounding than some of the other tracks on the album and obviously meant to tell a story of the swarm of hungry Locusts decimating the land.

“Eloquent Look” is another track using Polyrhythms where the rhythm guitar plays a 5/4 riff against a 4/4 drum beat while the keyboards play in 3/4!? Eventually all the parts fall into the same time signature and the lead plays a tapped melody that is almost a study in tapping techniques, from tapped arpeggios, tapped bends and apparently multi-fingered tapping too. This track is another of the darker sounding tracks with a harmonic minor sound to it.

“Conversion” sounds very 80’s to me in the beginning, I think the rhythm is very George Lynch. The riff is actually more complicated than it first seems as Jonas points out it keeps shifting its modality from Lydian to Mixolydian to Aeolian and that is just the intro, this song actually has more keys than a locksmith’s workshop. It apparently meanders from E Minor to F# Phrygian, F Harmonic Minor, F# Lydian, D Minor, C Minor and Eb Minor! It is composed in a way that you really don’t notice at all though.

The only criticism I have is that the delay drenched middy solo guitar sound is used so much throughout the album that my ears got a bit tired I would liked to have had some different lead tones rather than sticking to one favourite setup. Jonas is an incredible technical master of the guitar with a progressive rock style, I imagine he would also sit well in a fusion rock setting as he has a great deal of music theory knowledge and improvisational skills. I would really like to hear Jonas playing some blues based rock as the playing in “I Feel Sorry” hint at another side to his playing yet to be explored in full, maybe I can pursuade him to record a track!

For more information check out JonasTamas.com.

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