The first song "Sarabande..." / Fading Away by Joshua Craig Podolsky is quite boring. I wasn't crazy about it. Standard guitar god jerking off. Clash With Devil and To Escape For Life by Milos "Dodo" Dolezal are both wonderful: Majestic soaring guitar riffs and enjoyable melodies. Definitely the star of this whole collection. If more power metal bands could do this the world would be a better place. Very cool. Gutzy Rose by Honza Kirk Behunek has a nice crunch to it. Leige Lord type ideas. I like this one a lot. Paste's Whipped Cream is cock sucking fag crap. Alcatrazz type shit. Boring! Broken Helm by Jura J Topor is next. A lot going on. Very fast playing, switching up to more heart felt power ballad stuff, and then back again. Not bad, but not great. Jumper Lace by Roman Krokus Kriz is exactly what you would think this album would deliver. I'm not crazy about this one. Yeah very epic-like, but not really living up to what it is trying to do. Presto by Roman Krokus Kriz has a fresh feel to it. Classic Van Halen riffs with interesting use of distortion and white noise.
     I'd say that for sure the best two songs on the album are Clash With Devil and To Escape For Life by Milos "Dodo" Dolezal. The worst is "Sarabande..." / Fading Away by Joshua Craig Podolsky. Honza Kirk Behunek split his songs with Gutzy Rose being very cool and Universe being a lame duck.
     Overall and interesting idea for an album. I'd for sure like to hear more from some of these guys, and no more from others. I think that when guys like this just come out and jerk-off with their guitars it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Egos getting in the way of great music.  All in all however, this is a cool album to throw on and just chill out to.    

http://www.unchain.com

Decent
I agree that the compositions and playing aren''t very original, but for anyone curious to hear something a little different it''s worth a spin or two. Alot of it is laid back and classical sounding (European musicians are always heavily influenced by classical music) I would have like to hear a little more agressiveness- the cd may be called metal guitar but you won''t find much metal here. Overall it''s not bad for a somewhat amateur level, but for a real take on European metal guitar try Children of Bodom, Symphony X, In Flames or Soilwork. Those wanting to hear more of a shred type album I suggest anything by Joe Stump, Michael Angelo Batio, or Rusty Cooley.

- Customer rewiew # 2:

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this cd is great if u would like to hear great guitar work and alot of good solos i suggest this cd to anyone.

- Customer rewiew # 3

Quite the metal CD
Skip the first track and continue listening, if you want to hear some quality instrumental metal guitar playing this is the album for you. The songs are nicely laid out and not over done, well thought out also. I would recomend to anyone:

http://www.classical-4-all.com

     At times this compilation would put you in mind of Yngwie Malmsteen's 1988 _Odyssey_ or even _Trilogy_ from 1986. Other cuts are more in tune with movements and riffing comparable to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. The rest of the gaps are filled with, from what I am able to tell, mostly guitarists reaching out to the US market from Czech Republic by way of a tremendous amount of Tony MacAlpine, Adrian Belew, Vinnie Moore and Ritchie Blackmore worship. Stuart Hamm, a personal favorite, is also observed here with the welcome addition of some very imaginary bass playing on _Chamber Metal_. If you own every Yngwie CD, you wish Jake E. Lee would invariably release monthly, and you beat up your cousin for not recognizing Blackmore's diatonic minor scales layered over modest blues riffs, add another three points to this score. For me, my GTR album and David Lee Roth's _Skyscraper_ (Steve Vai and Billy Sheehan) will suit me just fine. Most inspired cut: "Stormy Winter Nights" by Stanislav Berka. That not just because we know what snow is here in Iowa either!    

http://www.chroniclesofchaos.com

     The title says it all: this is an instrumental compilation of 7 Czech and Slovak guitarists, each one playing two songs. Of course which such a record, the quality of compositions, the playing variety, and the overall result suffers from a lack of focus and homogeneity, but globally speaking, this is a very decent album. The production is only average, but indeed is indeed a good surprise, considered the fact that the album has been recorded on a small budget. The title notwithstanding, this CD does not contain exclusively neo-classical stuff; some bluesy-rock also appears on some songs. Of course, the different tracks on this demo don't really herald any new ideas and real progressive features are lacking, even though the playing and melodies are quite pleasant. Some of the heavy riffing reminds a lot of eighties bands; it appears that the Czech shredders have been very influenced by the golden era of virtuosos. The most gifted and promising guitarist of the compilation is, in my opinion, Jura Topor ("Broken Helm"). Maybe a record company will offer him an opportunity for a full-length album?

http://www.dvsrecords.com

      This is an instrumental album comprised of beautiful guitar work that goes from soothing acoustic passages to furious demonic electric-guitar wizardry. Lots of the work featured here has a medieval & fantasy type feel to it. There are 14 tracks & 7 musicians each with 2 songs. The music is very much Metal music, but has a strong classical touch to it as well. This is a must for all guitarist & for fans of good music! There is photos & contact addresses for each guitarist featured.

http://www.beowolfproductions.com

     Well here's a weird one for you, Dwell assembling a bunch of Czech and Slovakian guitar wankers who turn in a wide variety of instrumental tracks, not really all that classical, more like Satriani to Schenker, over to Yngwie to the occasional full classical dip, all ushering in a new era of Prague metal. The ideas of course sidle up into impressive through the backdoor: writers from a cultural backwash use their isolation to stay fresh, filtering the few influences they have through the melodies of their home cultures. Nearly all the album is recorded in the Czech Republic and in total, it really reinforces the fact that competition levels are extremely high nowadays, even if the nu-metal brigade has foregone this kind of shredmanship for whatever weird textural artforms they're on about. Final impressions before I bolt: a lot of Yngwie influence and an odd predilection for scratchy fuzzy effects.

 http://www.hardradio.com

     Interesting that one of the first metal releases of the new millennium (there is no year zero, people) would be an all-instrumental shred compilation. When I think of something like this, I picture mountain-hairs in Shrapnel ads of the late eighties. Well, the spirit of Jason Becker and Guy Mann-Dude is still alive in the Czech Republic, as proven by the dearth of Czech axemen on this comp. Unfortunately, it seems that the guitar-hero genre hasn't progressed beyond the masturbatory whittling that caused the death of shred for everyone but whammybar-stroking sycophants (and Czechs, apparently) back in the eighties. Too many of these "songs" sound like studio versions of the traditional live five-minute solo perfected by stadium bands of the eighties. That's fine if your singer needs some time to go shoot some insulin, but an entire album's worth of the stuff proves a bit taxing. It helps when there are quality entries like Joshua Craig Podolsky's "'Sarabande...'/Fading Away", which peppers a stirring acoustic classical guitar piece with tasteful electric leads. Also good and melodic is Paste's "Whipped Cream", a catchy, short, and undamaging little piece. Stuff like this is OK, but when you get something like Milos "Dodo" Dolezal's "Clash with the Devil", which seems to be little more than a vehicle for him to go "wheeeee doodoooreawdooodooo squaaaawww" (an succinct description for most of the stuff hereon), you begin to tire of the musical megalomania and trade it in for something that is not totally ego-powered. I could see this having some textbook appeal for musicians, but most people who like metal like it for reasons other than the notes-per-second ratio. I salute Dwell for doing something this different, but, me, I like riffs, and so I will pass...

http://www.internettrash.com