Here's another artist that I have never heard of. Coste Apetrea is a guitarist and if you look at him he looks like the son of Frank Zappa. He has been around since the 70's and has appeared on other artist’ albums like Jukka Tolonen for instance that I reviewed here on this very site. At any rate, this is another journey into solo hood by this Swede and it's nothing short of unpredictable.

"Rites Of Passage" quickly goes all over the place and never staying on track for more than a few moments. It starts out quickly in the Prog vein with very strong, heavy and very metallic guitar riffs before breaking out into ethnic sounds and then going into all these bizarre time changes. "Romana Lucia" blends romantic, soft, gentle and relaxing guitar work blended with odd sounds that could be heard on the Steve Vai "Flex-able" disc. Yeah, it's just flat out weird. After almost six minutes of what sounded like an instrumental, Coste begins to sing.

"Bagdad Boogie" is a bit more straight forward and rocking. The guitars are sweet here as the man just wails and pours his heart and soul all over this thing. The solo's kick ass as well. The drumming won't take a back seat either as they jam out as well. Damn, after two minutes of awesomeness, things take a left turn. It's weird. It goes back into that ethnic vibe, but the Rock remains in there. The fusion of Prog, Jazz and even Classical makes the rounds in here as well. Clearly, the man is a genius just like Zappa. He's very schizophrenic with his music which makes for an incredible journey, but it's hard to stay focused on the music. He has a lot of cool ideas and I wish that he could stick with them for a minute or two or three before doing any kind of change ups because what he does is interesting.

This isn't an easy listen and even if you are musical genius or think you are then take a stab at this. Even you will have to sit with this for a while before getting it. I like complicated music and while I appreciate what he does, this will take a lot out of you aurally and mentally. (Online August 7, 2006)