Hot enough for you?

Listening to Bosnian metal guitarist Emir Hot’s new CD is like taking a trip into an alternate universe where the last 20 years of modern rock never happened. In this parallel world, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest are revered musical heroes and Dungeons and Dragons is everyone’s favourite game.

Sevdah Metal, Hot’s more or less debut CD, is a showcase of his guitar virtuosity and a kind of homage to the heavy metal axe wielders of recent history.

Song lyrics on the disc, written by Hot and delivered by hired vocalist John West, evoke mystical, Tolkienesque landscapes and nihilistic emotion. Against Hot’s Gatling gun barrage of guitar notes on “Skies and Oceans”, West intones that “the silence all around is killing my mind!” On the gloomy “Land of the Dark”, he cries out: “In the land of madness, whispers are so loud. Evil sleeps in blackness, dreaming of the dark. It feels like being in Hell!”

At times, all this can seem a bit like what Jack Black parodied in 2003 with the Hollywood comedy School of Rock. In that flick, Black played an inveterate metalhead who stumbles into a substitute teaching gig at a private grade school. He wins the hearts of his young charges while teaching them, to the dismay of his starched-collared colleagues, to perform a checklist of over the top heavy metal clichés.

And this record may indeed win a few hearts from listeners with an affinity for old school metal unalloyed by the plinky and fey sounds of the contemporary bands now so praised by adoring music critics.

One has to respect Hot for sticking to what he loves. He hasn’t sold out—in fact he barely acknowledges—the musical world outside the metal domain. He clearly revels in the kind of rapid-fire all-out guitar rock he headbangingly performs.

Track Listing

Forspil
Devils in Disguise
World Set on Fire
Skies and Oceans
Sevdah Metal Rhapsody
Stand and Fight
Endless Pain
Hora Martisorului
Land of the Dark
You