WARREN DEMARTINI VS. CARLOS CAVAZO, THE INFESTATION SHOWDOWN

These Queensryche “Cabaret” live shows sure do sound interesting but I’m not about to fly out west just to see Geoff Tate prancing around in a leotard. Maybe MS Super Stud Anso DF wants to go to the Palm Springs or San Diego date? Regardless, I can’t be bothered — Queensryche haven’t released anything good in many a year (I’d argue that 2003’s Tribe was a half-decent entry) and in the meantime we’ve got a ridiculously great new Ratt album to jam. It’s seriously all I want to listen to right now. I can’t help it — it’s so good!

One thing I keep forgetting while pumping my fist in the air to “Eat Me Up Alive” or the stupidly catchy “Lost Weekend” or “As Good As It Gets” is that Carlos Cavazo is in this band now. Allow me to repeat: Carlos Cavazo is now in Ratt. As if having Tasty Riff McTasterson himself, Warren DeMartini, weren’t enough, the Ratt pack now has two lead guitarists amongst its ranks. The results are an ’80s guitar nerd’s wet dream, and not in a “Steve Vai and Joe Satriani shredding on the same record over top of each other constantly!” kind of way… just tasty riff after tasty riff, juicy lick after finger-smacking, delicious, savory lick. Lately I’ve been playing the “Who’s playing this guitar solo?” game. It’s fun because DeMartini and Cavazo’s styles are similar enough (same tree, different branches) so that you can’t immediately tell who’s playing, but if you’re familiar with each axeman’s discography you can definitely zone in on certain stylistic subtleties and differences in the way the two string notes together.

Here’s a stream of Infestation album-opener “Eat Me Up Alive” which Axl posted a couple of weeks back but I’d like to post again because a) it rules, b) I’m fairly certain both DeMartini and Cavazo take solos in this song. (You may need to click the slider after hitting play to get it to work.). The whole album is this good… really, I swear. Infestation comes out officially on April 20th.

-VN