Review by Ted Darden
From Detroit, the city that brought you Motown and Punk Rock, Iggy Pop, MC5, George Clinton, and the Temptations, comes Sammy Boller. Boller’s instrumental venture, Kingdom of The Sun, should out shine the average instrumental albums of his genre and remind us all that a lead singer isn’t really necessary to enjoy a song, and sometimes it’s the feeling you get from the music that speaks to you. Boller’s first instrumental album features songs that sound like David Gilmore if he the suffered a three-quarter life crisis and was looking for a youthful edge to his music, while “Cloak of Light” sounds like the virtuoso himself. Some of Boller’s songs are slightly repetitive and somewhat familiar, while songs like “Temple of Light” show a musician beyond his ears that will likely be pushing his way onto Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of top 100 guitar players somewhere in the future… and not on the low end either. “Awakening from the Day Dream” isn’t a song that actually wakes you from a day dream, but rather, relaxes you to a point of mental euphoria that allows for daydreams you never had time for, but thanks to Sammy Boller, you do now.
This heady, epic, album that reminds us all that the guitar is not dead in this world of preprogrammed sound and formulaic riffs is available now at your local record shops and online sources, so grab Sammy Boller’s Kingdom of the Sun from Rustbelt Recods. In these times of COVID and unrest, you need it brothers and sisters.
