Chris Caffery - Pins And Needles

Published March 25 2007

*=Staff's pick	Pins & Needles Sixty-Six Torment Walls YGBFKM Sad Chained Worms* Crossed The Time* Metal East* Qualido The Temple Once Upon A Time (bonus track)

Genre	Heavy Metal	Chris Caffery	Vocals
Tracks	14	Chris Caffery	Guitar
Runningtime	57 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Metal Heaven	C. Caffery/N. Douglas	Bass
Release	23 March 2007	Yael	Drums
Country	USA	Phil Morris	Keyboard
Similar artists	Jon Oliva's Pain, Pain Of Salvation

The guitarist of legendary US metal band Savatage is going solo for the third time (following up Faces and W.A.R.P.E.D). And why would he want to do that? Well, clearly he has a lot of ideas that did not fit in Savatage. The question is if they fit at all… Pins & Needles is utterly modern in its sound. Still there are 70s riffs as in for example Worms. The Time is spiced with opera vocals by Marcus DeLoach. On Metal East Caffery adds just eastern influences in form of a violin (played by Lucia Micarelli) and thus it sounds a bit like System of a Down. The violin returns in the bonus track Once Upon A Time.

The weakest spot in all this is that Caffery is not primarily a singer. It doesn't sound terrible, but it doesn't sound especially breathtaking great either. Nevertheless I prefer a voice with a bit raw character than a clean but empty one. Actually, he sounds not totally unlike a guy calling himself Alice Cooper. An artist he also have borrowed a bit of a theatrical mood from in The Temple. The production feels uncomfortable, and not in a good rough way, but in an overdone laboured way.

The marketing plan for this release is immense and that will probably pay off in this becoming a hype of some sort, not at least among the more modern embracing prog metal fans liking Jon Oliva's Pain. But for the conservative old heavy metal fans of Savatage's Gutter Ballet, it could be worse to take this in. And what Caffery is going to do on tour with Timo Kotipelto is not anything I will even try to understand. Pins & Needles has some moments, but is all too uneven and divided to apply to me.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
6	7	3	5	5

Summary
5 chalices of 10 - David