Instru-Metal has always been the underdog through the generations of metal scenes that the world has witnessed. While bands with front people and vocals dominated the spotlight, the instrumental component of heavy metal took it’s time in building a spotlight for it’s own glory, making it one of the fast growing and widely appreciated sub genre of the community today.

Angel Vivaldi takes a fair share of that and boy, it sure is worth it. ‘Synapse’ is his new upcoming album in October and it djents alright, but it has explosive shred material etched all over the record, which demands revisiting each song over and over again. The nine track album has an excellent balance of classic Vivaldi styled material and fresh new sounds, and a beautiful album layout, wherein each song represents the molecule of various hormones that exist within and affect the human body.

“Dopamine” was the first single released off the album and it packs an amazing seven string fueled punch executed by Vivaldi himself, guitarist Jason Tarantino, and is very reminiscent of his older material. The song also features a guest solo by Oli Herbert (All that Remains), and the album itself has two more guest solos. “Serotonin” is one of the laid back tracks and features Nita Strauss (Alice Cooper), and “Oxcytocin” features Gus G (ex-Ozzy Osbourne). What confuses me about both of these tracks is that if they were written with the intention to invoke an overload of emotions in the listener, because if that’s a yes, then they do a very very good job at it.

“Adrenaline” sounds exactly how you’d imagine the hormone gushing through you in a situation where you’d need to fight for survival. Or to be honest really, you’d end up an adrenaline junkie anyways trying to catch up with the shredding involved in the song. The title track and the epilogue to the album, is a technical head-bang worthy segment, and an overall fret frenzy.

If we had to get a little comparative,’The Speed of Dark’ and ‘Universal Language’ EP’s ever so slightly included arguably more technical composing, but regardless of that, ‘Synapse’ as an album is a very beautiful concept and one of the best overall records Vivaldi has put out to date.

Angel Vivaldi’s ‘Synapse’ is a very well planned instrumental album, written marvelously kudos to his playing style. The concept sets it well, and just further more adds into the sheer joy of listening to the tracks back to back. ‘Synapse’ is out October 6th.