I just realized that Super Colossal is a little more than a year old now (3/14/06) after living with it for a year I'm wondering if anyones opinions have changed for the better or worse?

Well, my opinion did not change much as it was at the beginning. I was thrilled that it is coming out. But it just couldn't catch my attention for long. I am just not listening to it (right now Is There Love In Space? is playing, I chose it, not a Winamp pick). From the whole album I listen to and I play Made Of Tears which I find awesome, especially to improvise over it. Sometimes Just Like Lightning for the groove. Other than that I've noticed that I change almost every other track that Winamp picks :mellow:

after picking up the tab book for the album. I do tend to find myself to better appreciate joe's albums [I have pretty much all his albums except the g3]. in this case, I have a much bigger appreciation for Ten words & the meaning of love.

I still enjoy Redshift riders, ten words, a cool new way [big time], one robot's dream, the meaning of love, mde of tears, theme for a strange world [I don't know why people don't seem to like this one].

crowd chant is something I would like to play for people live, i wonder if I could get them to follow???

For me Super Colossal has been a landmark album..the music has changed so much over the years and this album for me is an evolutionary change. The rest of the albums were awesome but was still guitar music...this one on the other hand is just music which any instrumental guitarist is probably working towards.

I listen to this album more than any other satch album nowadays.

i still tihnk it's a solid album. the layering is great! the soungs sound fresh and IMHO i think it's better than ITLIS!

IMHO, I think that both SC & ITLIS have quite a bit of filler to them. I really enjoyed SBM [with the exception of You Saved My Life]..... I feel that EOC is underated, and that would be nice if it was remiced with live instruments.

I love the albums before that. And would love to see Joe do an album that sort of had acts to it.

thats a good observation. he needs to do another like crystal planet or flying style. just rock ...turn it up , produce it up...layer it , whatever

I really love Super Colossal I've come to like it the best actually, theres a little bit of everything your looking for, so much diversity.

I swear to god, I never quite understood why people thought of it as a disappointment, it was the first Satch album I heard and I felt it was the ultimate rock album with a lot of diversity.

I include it in my top 5 albums of Satch easily.

I agree, I love Super Colossal, it seems to contain a song that would fit into any era of Joe's career. I also love his guitar tones on the CD.

if youre going to layer that much , you might as well do a ful production. imo , those songs arent quite good enough for what was intended for that style of recording / writing. although , as an album in general, its not too bad...

or , you could say, will the next album be the same title as this ''thread''? :no:

My favorites are "Just Like Lightnin'" and "It's So Good".
When this album was released, I was listening Paul Gilbert's songs.
So, when I met Gilbert, I stopped to listen to many Satriani songs.
Paul is just the god of guitar!!!! Even his guitar lessons are cool!

I always will expect an album from Joe that is more Hard-rock-oriented like Flying In A Blue Dream.
One Big Rush and Back To Shala-Bal are immortal!

Totally agree...enough with these silly love song ballads/odes to his wife. Joe needs to really come up with a more rocking record...His last 2 releases seemed somewhat rushed. I think he needs to take his time and really work on creating his masterpiece before he gets too old. I understand why he had to play a lot of the same old songs on the tour (20th anniversary of SWTA), but it would be great if he could write some new classics.

I think he should do a more Metal approach, make more songs like 'War', like you know a more serious sounding approach, like you know..stop for a while with the happy go round riffs and make a heavier sound.

Yeah, Joe really should focus more on the rhythm aspects of his songs, as a lot of the rhythm parts in his tunes are weak.

Yeah, he should make more crazy riffs and drive them into the ground and just have a little solo or something thrown in.

I'd love a song like House Full Of Bullets.

From what I read here, you must hear some Paul Gilbert albums, a mix of shreddin', van halen power riffs, melody and guitar duels.
Hear "Muscle Car", it resumes all.

What?

A Cool New Way is the only song i listen to from that album. so tranquil

It's good, well balanced album but not my favourite.
It has one song that I can listen over and over again - Ten Words.

Some of the last albums are among my favorites, I think Super Colossal has some great tunes.

spider i totally agree, some great tunes but i think that flying in a blue dream is probably my fav, or crystal planet or.. .
well you get the idea

I can see some people point of view here but i think the more you listen to this album it grows and grows. i felt the same way about Strange Beautiful Music and it is now permanentl in my car CD changer. I think some have to high expectations of some mystical proportions when at the end of the day although Joe is the most aesome guitarist it can be hard to write year after year great great music. I also think some of these songs from Super Colossal have evolved immnesely in the live situation take Made of Tears on the Live DVD/CD has to the best extended version of a song he has done in years IMO.

Go on give it another listen this weekend and give the tracks a chance to impress you. :D

I agree that "A Cool New Way" is one of the few tracks on this album that really sound like a Joe Satriani song. The rest sounds like a Joe Satriani imitation - start with a blues-rock riff, follow with blues lick based melody line with one "odd" note inserted for tenstion, play a solo, reprise. It bores me.

I've tried and tried, but I absolutely cannot get into this album. When I caught him on the G3 tour, his set owned, but the title track was the one song I sat through rather than enjoyed. It just feels too by-the-numbers.

With isolated instances (the second half of Engines, "Mountain Song," Searching, and A Cool New Way), Joe's last great album was Crystal Planet. His guitar tones have suffered since he's started doing so much direct (I'd blame Peavey, but his live tone was excellent when I saw him), and his writing just doesn't catch me these days. He doesn't sound like he's pushing himself any more.

I'm not going to join you guys in saying "I want such-and-such an album from Joe" because for me when Joe's at his best, he's doing the unexpected. "Surfing" rewrote the book on rock guitar. Flying built off that, but got heavier and, god forbid, saw Joe singing a few songs. The Extremist took the heaviness of Flying but pushed it into a blues and blues/rock vein, and features some of Joe's most melodic playing of his career (the lead to "Friends" still kills me). Then, the self-titled WAS a stripped down blues rock album with edgier guitar, completely out of left field after the lushness of the Extremist and the studio precision of Flying. And then from there, Joe released a kickass rock album with a few electronica elements gurgling in the background on Crystal Planet to incredible effect, and then doove full-bore into electronica, using programmed accompaniaments and recording all guitars direct and delivering something way outside of what was considered a "guitar god" album.

And then, he records three studio albums that sound like Led Zeppelin was handling the rhythm duties. He's stopped pushing boundaries, and for me what made Joe such an exciting guitarist was the fact he WAS pushing boundaries. I don't get it... He spends his entire career going further and further afield of what's considered "guitar" music, and releases some genre-changing albums in the process, and now he's just sitting back and trying to be Jimmy Page.

I think the songs in SC are of quite varied style. the song your describing with the blues-rock riff etc.. is exactly the kind of satch music I like. Just because it's basic and "easy" doesn't make it dull or bad I think. I do like the more exotic songs also, too me it doesn't matter, what matters is that the music is good.
I think Joe countinues to do great music even today, some of his earlier albums I don't even like if you compare them to his latest work.

Drew's post really sums the last few years of Joe's output for me. The only difference is that I feel SC is the true follow-up to The Extremist.

well, in my opinion. I think he has changed for the better. I like melodies that sing. and I feel that way when i listen to his ballads and thematic songs. I really got a great appreciation when I bough the tab book and tried to play the song. Now, CP is an amazing album, and of course so is surfing, however I do believe that every artist has a masterwork, and then other things will not compare to it. I believe joe's masterwork is Surfing.

and I do believe the best way for him to push boundaries is composition wise. I remember the older satch tracks not having almost any real rhythm tracks to them on the albums [at least to my ears]

now, I think he focuses a lot more on textures and on phrasing. Keep in mind that I don't think from a technical stand point, Satch will improve, and honeslty I don't think I want to hear him play a Rusty cooley type solo :P

on the other hand, I really did enjoy
ten words, I was trying to come up with the write ten words
a cool new way, it did feel like that when i first heard it.
one robot's dream, which is chillingly mechnical in ways
the meaning of love... I love the sustain on that
made of tear & theme...

I did feel that a couple of song where filler... but I think that is true of almost any album.

I would like to see joe try new stuff, but at the same time. I would like to see him do stuff that makes me feel something, I love what my sister says about joe, when he wants to convey to you an emotion you really get t.

examples of his recent stuff that i feel conveys a lot of feeling are.
what breaks a heart,
the meaning of love - my personal fav off of SC
if I could fly
searching...

just my 2 cents. :)

if SC is followup to extremist, wheres the ''motorcycle driver'' and ''summer song''? nothing quite that ''defined'' on super colossal...

totally agree! Super Collossal is its own platform.. has no real link to others...

It could possible be a weak version of Is There Love In Space.. but i dont see it being close to the extremist album.

Either way i personally dont think SuperCollossal will be talked about as much surfing with the alien album or flying in blue dream album or the extremeist album or EOC or CP..


"joe satriani" album is almost never talked about which it should be...but it is slightly diffrent side of joe's music to the rest of the albums.. not so fast paced which is prob why less of us comment on it.

Click here for uncensored pissing videos

Ignore/Remove