This is a near non-stop adventure for those into ultra-fast guitar playing.

Nicolas Waldo is a virtuoso guitarist from Bogota, Columbia, who has a new instrumental album out named 'Equilibrium'. With Dion Taboada on bass and Leandro Arias on drums, Waldo has laid out a lavish and stylish album with some cool and wacky sounds very much in the vein of Steve Vai. Adding to that, Waldo is also an accomplished keyboardist – check out the video to 'Dual Perspective' for proof. It shows Waldo is astonishingly fast (shredding both the guitar and synthesizer simultaneously) but it is not all noise and fuzz, there is a precision to his playing. His keyboard playing is very Arpeggio-heavy in the style of someone like Eddie Van Halen and his playing mirrors his guitar work where his fingers really fly.

What places this album into the ranks of really good instrumental work is the way there are clear themes in many of the songs (such as 'The Dreamer') so you get melodies as well as the lightning fast passages. Having said that, on the whole, the album is about speedy playing which is well executed and clear – the drummer and bassist keep up and add to the overall quality of the album with some unusual rhythms, most noticeable on 'Mystic Fingers'. As a counterpoint to the Metal mayhem, the acoustic guitar features towards the end on 'The Devil's Trill'. Returning to electrification, the closing track (a bonus) 'Blue Fire Torch' is one of the standouts – a Neo-Classical work of fantasy and Staccato drumming.

This is a near non-stop adventure for those into ultra-fast guitar playing.

Rob McKenzie