COSTE APETREA – Rites Of Passage

Far from being a vehicle for a guitarist to show off his bag of tricks, Rites of Passage is one of those albums that may add substance to your musical universe. World-renowned Fusion instrumentalist Coste Apetrea (Samla Mammas Manna, Jukka Tolonen) adds to his impressive discography seven instrumental gems that are sure to please a wide audience, ranging from fans of ’70s Mahavishnu to contemporary Jazz to Instrumental Hard Rock.

Half of the songs clock in at over eight minutes, and each one is a musical journey unto itself. While every move through each journey is sure-footed, Coste and his seven-man band do anything but walk a narrow path. The overall musical feel could be summed up as exploration without exploitation. That is, each player stretches out within the context of the groove, and the rhythm and dynamics often go through some radical changes, but all of this is done without sacrificing compositional integration and without, as the case often is with highly skilled soloists, getting lost in a million notes of instrumental incontinence.

Coste handles guitars, keyboards, percussion, and a few vocals; drums by Coste, Ake Eriksson and Peter Eyre; Melodica and piano by Bobbie; bass by Robert A.; violin by Santiago Jimenez; soprano saxophone (on one track) by Anders Paulsson. All compositions are credited to Coste.

Coste employs a robust, modern guitar sound that gives a hard edge to arrangements that otherwise might be perceived as limp to the younger Rock/Metal generation who aren’t happy unless they get their phallic fix of “balls” and “chunk.” Rites of Passage might just be the crossover album to bring that crowd around to the virtue of refined and sophisticated compositions.

Moreover, Coste’s loose-but-tight improvisational soloing style speaks sublimely from many years of attentive experience and development of the craft. Influences from American Jazz, Latin Jazz, Progressive Rock, Blues, Heavy Metal — they’re all in there. Coste comments: “The album is pretty heavy and maybe the Rockiest I’ve ever done, and that pleases me because people in my generation seem to cool down making more acoustic and softer music. I didn’t intend to make a heavy record, it just came out that way. Today I feel I wanna go even heavier next time around (to my own surprise).”

Coste, bring it on.