This various artists collection was assembled by Brian Tarquin. He's a guitar player who really seems to have a reverence for great guitar playing in all its various forms. This album showcases a lot of both the great guitar playing and the various forms. Although the bulk of it lands under fusion (and we put fusion under prog in general), there is Latin acoustic guitar, hard rock, funk and more in the mix on this set. There are a number of noteworthy musicians here, and every single track is a winner. If you love great guitar work (and exceptional playing on other instruments, too), give this a try. You will not likely find yourself disappointed.

This review is available in book (paperback and hardcover) form in Music Street Journal: 2018  Volume 3. More information and purchase links can be found at: garyhillauthor.com/Music-Street-Journal-2018.

A count in gives way to some screaming hot guitar work that's almost metal. They drive out from there into a killer jam with some fusion and world music at the heart of it. This reminds me of a harder rocking version of Santana in a lot of ways. The cut gets the use of both distorted and clean guitar soloing. It also has some great changes. There is some pretty awesome keyboard work on this, too. The percussion breakdown is a nice touch, too.

As you might guess of a song with that title, this has a lot of funk in the mix. That said, it's also packed with killer near metal moments and a lot of fusion. I love the bass work on this, particularly the funky solo. The guitar playing is amazing, too, though.

With Zakk Wylde's name on this, one might expect a metal song. That's not what we get at all. This is so funky, and overall still feels like the music of the man who wrote it and originally performed it, Stevie Wonder. This is just harder rocking than Wonder's version. There are vocals on this that are delivered in fine rocking style. Again the bass work is exceptional. The whole cut is just plain on fire. In fact, this is one of my favorite things here.