David Valdes - Paradise Lost (2002)

This album is bootleg as fuck. From the looks of it, David went in with MS Paint and cropped himself into the front of a picture of a lightning bolt and haphazardly pasted his name in a standard Old English font. This is deceiving. You'd honestly expect some poorly produced crap from the looks of this album, would you not? This is not the case. David Valdes' Paradise Lost kicks spectacular ass.

David Valdes is from Spain and plays blindingly cool neo-classical shred. I believe he also played on a Jason Becker tribute album a little while back. He has a song entitled Cacophony on this album, which very well might be an homage to both Marty and Jason. Anyway, I haven't seen much else from David except for this album, which leads me to believe Paradise Lost is his only release. This is kind of disappointing, because Paradise Lost is god damned phenomenal.

I'm not fucking around when I say this album rivals Perpetual Burn or The Dark Chapter in terms of awesomeness in the genre of neo-classical. David's tone is spectacular and everything he plays is extremely clean. He hits every note perfectly. I'm not quite sure if he used a drum machine or anything like that, because the drums sound incredibly life-like. I can't get much information on David off of Google, because there are apparently alot of people named David Valdes, most of whom don't melt face with guitar solos.

David is on YouTube and he showcases every song on the album flawlessly live. You can check those songs out here. All of his sweeps are flawless, all of this picking is pristine. I downloaded this album sometime over the summer and shortly after, the upload link ceased to exist and there is no trace of this album anywhere. Nevertheless, David is an extremely formidable shredder. I think the highlights of this album would probably be found in Fall Angel and Paradise Lost. They showcase blindingly fast fret work and awesome breakdowns. No, not hardcore breakdowns. He doesn't play an E Minor chord over and over again. Sorry.

I think it's the goal over every shredder, whether they take a more bluesy approach or a more classically influenced one, to make the listener forget they're listening to music without lyrics. This album accomplishes this. David's playing almost seems to become singing at parts, and that is what I find to be remarkable about this album. Anyone interested in classically influenced shred guitar should definitely check it out.

8.5/10