Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock

Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock, is the mouthful title of Joe Satriani’s 12th studio album. Since his 1998 release Crystal Planet, Satch has maintained a steady interval between each studio album having a release every alternate year. Joining him this time around are Satriani regulars Matt Bissonette on bass and Jeff Campitelli on drums, while junior Satriani ZZ joins dad playing the Tenor Sax.

Musterion is right out of the Joe Satriani textbook of guitar playing. With an army of synthesisers and wah-wahs, Joe could turn his guitar into anything he desires. With a tone to die for and skills to kill for, Joe welcomes everyone to his beautiful world of octaves, modes and pentatonic licks.With Satch’s songs, it’s really hard to pick upon his influences, for it’s almost as if there are many songs within each song. Overdriver has got a very Black Sabbath-ish rhythm section infected by the magician’s trickery. Joe’s take is reminiscent of his G3 buddy Eric Johnson, whose licks might have rubbed off on Joe.
With I Wanna Rock, he tries a little simple pounding AC/DC rock-n-roll with some Van Halenism. The talk box has been always fun to hear whenever it has been used in rock, but it here it doesn’t prevent the track from being somewhat mediocre.

If dad’s not home definitely answer the door with his Tenor in hand. Professor Satchafunkilus as the second half of the name would indicate is a funky track, but it doesn’t have enough funkiness to hold one’s interest for long. A nice experiment, but the song’s a throw at the dart board which misses the target.

The first half to Revelation has beautiful melodies similar to those heard on some of Joe’s earlier tracks such as Chords of Life. It’s amazing how he keeps coming out with such sweet sounding tunes all the time. Even the next track Come on Baby is filled with romanticism and might just become a favorite with guitarists in love.

Out of the Sunrise is another eased out number which initially seems to be a bit lost in the dark, but eventually it finds its way. Another sign of Satriani not needing a ton of notes to keep his guitar hero torch burning.

Diddle-Y-A-Doo-Dat is a Frank Zappa style track with a Zappa like name to match it. The strange composition does well to rollout the carpet for the next track which is the stand out track of the album. Asif Vaysel has more than an eastern sounding name - it incorporates a great eastern vibe too. One of the rare occasions in the album where Joe cuts loose.

With Andalusia, Satch picks up the acoustic for a short round of flamenco flamboyance before picking up his trustworthy Ibanez. For those who felt Joe is slacking on the gas with age, this should provide enough reasons to suggest otherwise.

Professor Satchafunkilus and the Musterion of Rock proves that Satriani’s songs can be as hard to pronounce as they are to play. But keeping jokes aside, the album should be in the good category, but definitely not in the great category. With the wealth of experience that someone like Satriani possess it is hard to go wrong, though with the amount of experimenting that Satch does, it is quite probable. But thankfully, he gets it right more often than not.