GREAT KAT - "GUITAR GODDESS" (INDEPENDENT)
GREAT KAT - "GUITAR GODDESS" (INDEPENDENT)
Modesty was, is, and never will be The Great Kat's strong suit. Julliard violin virtuoso gone extravagent and wild, she has been assailing various eardrums around the world with her unique brand of cyberspeed metal guitar onslaught. So far, she has released upon mankind two full-length albums ("Worship me or Die" and "Beethoven on Speed"), a CD ROM ("Digital Beethoven on Cyberspeed", recently re-released) and now "Guitar Goddess", a mini CD.
Kat's strong suit is her ability to transform classical masterpieces into high-paced, fist-sized speed metal tracks delivered with furious aggression and impeccable craftswomanship. Or at least that's what I think, craftswomanship. In the songs not based on anything classical, you see, with all the screaming going on and the insanely frantic speed it's difficult to recognise her guitar prowess.
"Guitar Goddess" is a 8+ minute CD - very short even for a CD single, really - with two tracks based on classical pieces ("The Barber of Sevilla" and "Zigeunerweisen") and two Kat tracks. The latter two, I have to be honest here, are total crap. The classical tracks are really quite excellent in a particularly Kat way, but I think it's insulting to any Rabid Kat Slave to only offer slightly more than 8 minutes of music, half of which is positively uninspired.
I would really like to know what other guitarists think of The Great Kat, but there seem to be no recorded opinions of this ilk. Do they not take her seriously or are they secretly awed? Perhaps we'll never know.
I got a second copy of "Guitar Goddess" as well as a signed (!) poster of the Great Kat that I'll send off to one of the people who emails his or her snailmail address together with the reply to the question, "What is the real name of The Great Kat?" On January 1st I'll draw and let the winner know.
RK
Written August 1998