Monte Pittman-The power of three

Published: Absolute Underground Issue#57 April/May 2014

MONTE PITTMAN is a guy that moved to hollywood to start a band and ended up being Madonna's guitar teacher. I guess she thought he was pretty good because he ended up touring with her a bunch of times. He released a few acoustic albums that a bunch of people liked and then he signed to Metal Blade so that he could make a more hard rock/metal oriented release. He got a band and recorded an  album with Fleming Rassmussen, the guy that did the good Metallica albums from the 80's. I guess it's back closer to his roots because he used to play in Prong.
It starts as a rock album and sounds like rock songs you would hear on the radio. The guitar playing is the focal point, it seems like he wants people to really notice that he's a good guitarist. I mean he is a good player but they really seem to want to get that across in the first three songs. It gets better four tracks in where you get more of a fully developed song in "Blood hungry thirst".  #6"Away from here" is catchy as fuck, it has nearly the same pace all the way through but chugs along with three minutes of great rock sound. It seems at this point they start taking the album a lot more serious. The songs start getting longer and the arrangement starts getting a lot more complicated. The last song "All is fair in love and war" is all over the place including what I guess is an attempt at gutteral vocals. Also echos, solos, some atmospherics and a little choir noise. The it all ends the way it began...with the crackle of static.
This album starts out like it's made with a formula to get radio play. It gets better as it goes though when they get their radio songs out of the way and start to free it up a bit. The first five are all catchy songs but it feels a little like they tried really hard to make sure they were that way. If you're into radio rock you'll like it a lot, I really preffered the last three songs over the rest of the album. And yeah I noticed how many times I've used the word "three" it's weird.


Michael F. Carnage

http://www.montepittman.com/