Displaying items by tag: GuitarSlinger

JOHN IVAN, GuitarSlinger

© 2024 John Ivan Belousov / Bestia Records (number n/a), 9 tracks = 59'05"

Hope you remember the days of triumph of the mighty US label Shrapnel Records — not only the first American metal label but, far more importantly, a kind of springboard for quite a number of guitar talents all over the US and the world. With a string of albums of such great players as Tony MacAlpine and Paul Gilbert (as a member of Racer X), that label and its boss Mike Varney, a good guitar player himself, wrote the modern rock formula of what an instrumental album of the 80s and 90s should be.

Sadly, such kinds of albums of little-known or even unknown guitar virtuosos are nowadays extremely rare, but a debut solo CD by Ukrainian musician and producer John Ivan Belousov has all the generic traits of those Shrapnel Records of old. Raised on a heavy diet of Yngwie Malmsteen and, eh, aforementioned US shredders, John was once a candidate for one of the last “true” line-ups of the legendary Russian thrash metal institution Master, although his own band Bestia, based in the city of Nikolaev in Ukraine, played a pure US power/speed metal and drew many comparisons with Racer X (again!) even back in the 90s.