Quintessence, the metal webzine, has released their first ever compilation album: Fret Essential - Volume One. An all instrumental album, it features a huge variety of musical styles. From blues to funk to progressive, all of them have a metal tinge to them. The interesting part of this album is the fact that these artists actually pay attention to the structure and purpose of their songs, not just going off on some self-serving, Yngwie-esque finger-diarrhea session. Every one of these songs has something unique to offer, and with the lack of vocals you really get to pay attention to what's going on musically. The great thing about an instrumental song is the fact that there are - get this - no vocals! This forces the artist to pay attention to what they're writing, as monotony is much more prevalent with the absence of lyrics. As I said before, the soloing here isn't just to see who can play the fastest or who can fit the most scales into a 4 minute span of time. The lead guitar is merely filling the empty space that that the vocals left, not completely taking over the song. Each and every other instrument plays as normal. A great example of this would be "Opus 2" by Sean Mercer. It sounds like a metallized 1800's classical music song. You can clearly hear a great bassline and precision drumming, and the lead guitar is soloing perfectly over this solid foundation. It is a solid example of what an instrumental should be. There are some odd songs as well that you wouldn't expect on what is supposed to be a metal album. "Celibate Funk" by Chaz DePaolo has a funkish sound to it with some baptist church organ in the background. "Carpe Diem Part 1" by Dave Villano has sort of a Spanish guitar sound to it, or even a Blue Oyster Cult dreamlike sense. Rob Sbar Noesis' "Lexical Gap" is extremely jazz fusion styled. Then you get a song like "Black Inside" by Tom Kopyto, which is straight balls-to-the-wall metal. The variety is what makes this compilation. Most people, for some reason, prefer vocals in their music. I could go either way, depending on the mood and feel of the song. Some of my favorite Iron Maiden songs are instrumentals ("Transylvania", "Losfer Words"). I thoroughly enjoyed this album, even some of the slower songs and despite some poor production in places. My applause goes to both the artists for writing the songs and Quintessence for putting together such a diverse compilation in this world of homogenous compilations. My only fear is that the average listener wouldn't find this all-instrumental offering very accessible. It's their loss.

Sean Mercer's "Opus 2" - Incredible classical-music sound, I'd love to hear more of this fellow Ray DeTone's "The Journey Begins" - So multifaceted, it seems like 5 songs in one