RUSTY COOLEY - Rusty Cooley

Rusty Cooley - Rusty Cooley

12 songs
61:54 minutes
***** ****
Lion

Bandpage

When your name is Rusty Cooley, and you come from the Southern state of Georgia, you would only expect some hillbilly redneck in grease stained wifebeater shirt. Or at least that's the impression I got from a year living in the States.

But then you should not always judge a book by its cover, and an artist by his name. Rusty Cooley is another guitar player from the ever growing Lion Music label from Finland, and where most of his label mates just don't reach me with their music, Rusty Cooley's self-titled debut album has something very special indeed. His instrumental music is influenced by late-Eighties Shrapnel sound, something probably not very modern these days, but who didn't have some Racer X, Cacophony or Apocrypha LPs in their vinyl collections back then?

What Rusty Cooley is playing is ultrafast instrumental metal with strong classical influences. His 7-string guitar work (although I wouldn't hear the difference one more string makes) is backed by very solid keyboard work that adds important texture to the overall sound.

After ten regular rounds of instrumental mayhem, there are two vocal bonus tracks where some of the instrumental tracks are shown in a different, and no worse, way, if you like high pitched vocal metal. This is an album which is interesting for guitar solo people (although most will never be able to play at this hellish speed), but also for the regular hard rock and metal community that are not disturbed by the lack of vocals. 9 high speed points.

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