It’s always great to see how people are addicted to music and do everything to just play music. The greek Theodore Ziras is such a guy. He started to play guitar at the age of fifteen and until this day he has studied at several musical institutions. He also played in numerous bands and has released several albums and solo albums. With Hyperyrexia he has released his third solo album on which he got some help from Derek Sherinian (ex-Dream Theater, Yngwie Malmsteen) and Brian Tichy (Ozzy).

 

The album has a flying start and reminds me of the Ayreon project of Arjen Lucassen. The main reason for this is probably the keyboards and the guitar riffs in the songs. Especially ‘Child Of Scotland’ looks like everything that is done on the Universal Migrator album of Ayreon.

 

Luckily enough this trend is broken with 'Solitude', which is the fourth song on the album. During this song the tempo is quite a bit lower compared to the previous songs and gives Theodore Ziras the opportunity to show himself as another guitar player. This is something that happens more in the songs that follow. Theodore Ziras shows several different guitar styles that give the album a nice twist.

 

The only problem with instrumental solo albums is that most of the time I do miss the vocals on the album and the fact that I get very tired of constantly being overwhelmed by guitar masturbation. Of course it’s great that a guitar player can show off, in the end most of the metalheads can only dream of what people like Theodore Ziras do. But with most solo albums I have the feeling the guitar player is doing the same thing over and over again.

 

In the end it’s getting very obvious Theodore Ziras is to me the same as all those other solo guitar players. All of those guys are really great musicians but most of the time they’re trying to break every speed record that involves guitar playing. Luckily for Theodore Ziras every once in a while there’s a song that isn’t at top speed which gives the listener time to catch a breath. This album is probably a great one for all the fans of instrumental guitar solo albums. But for me the album doesn’t bring anything new to the table and I do miss the vocals from time to time.