You may not have heard of Andy Wood, guitarist of the band Down From Up and virutosic Suhr weilding shredmeister. You may have also seen a recent gear walkthrough here on Guitar Noize posted by Paul, he has a very nice rig! If you want to see more check out this video of Andy showing of his Suhr Modern and Suhr Badger 18 Watt Combo. Oh and here’s another from NAMM 09, he’s an amazing country player as well as Metal as you can see!
Anyway Andy has just released his first solo album entitled “A Disconcerting Amalgam“, before hearing this I had heard the Down From Up album From Ashes To Empire so I had heard Andy in heavy rock mode which is impressive, great tone, great riffs and great phrasing. So I thought I had Andy sussed, until that is I bought this album the other day. The first track on what I expected to be a metal shred-fest is an arrangement of Amazing Grace with a beautiful clean tone that leaves you wanting more, 1:11 was just too short Andy! My favourite arrangement of Amazing Grace it Tommy Emmanuel’s version, if Andy had done a full length version this would be right up there.
So what other surprises does this album have concealed beneath this rocker’s facade? Well quite a lot actually, there is “Shades of Gray” with great bluesy playing over a Eric Johnson-esque clean chord backing, really love the lead tone on this track I’m a sucker for a crunchy neck pickup and the melody has traces of early Satriani in there too.
Big Mon, a cover of the Bill Monroe track is another surprise showing Andy’s roots of Bluegrass playing, wonder if that is Andy playing the Mandolin I read somewhere that he started on Mandolin and then moved to guitar. The track is full of acoustic flat-picking that is deceptively mature for such a young whipper-snapper.
More Pretty Girls Than One another Bluegrass cover by Alton Delmore this time a more traditional country song, not sure who is on Vocal duty (damn itunes not giving me any info!) but I certainly didn’t expect this track.
To finish off a trio of country tracks is “Shredneck“, no not that Shredneck! This is a fast chicken-pickin-tastic track which sounds very Steve Morse these kind of tracks seem to be an obligatory addition to shred albums these days, even Guthrie Govan and Andy Timmons did it on their albums.
Ok so that is the surprises out of the way, lets talk about the rock tracks. Chelmsford, is a jazzy rock track with some mental tapping arpeggios that reminded me of one of Rick Graham’s exercises ‘Freefall‘. Emergence Day is another more typical rock shredder track with some incredible playing once again. “11th Hour” is a more Fusion inspired rock track, a sprinkle of Greg Howe over some Andy James style melodies.
My favourite track on the album is Bar Exam which fuses Andy’s country, funk and rock influences over a grooving Hammond. Some incredibly tasty phrasing and double-stops with a great crunchy clean tone, sounds like maybe his Suhr Badger may have gotten in on the act for this track.
No rock album would be complete without a rock power-ballad and this is how the album ends, “Fallen Heroes” features Andy’s tasteful melodic playing over an acoustic backing track. Very Andy Timmons.
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