Jeff Scott Soto has played with some incredible musicians throughout his career, and this album sees some players that are beyond description. Octavision is the brainchild of Armenian guitar virtuoso, Hovak Alaverdyan, who wanted to put together music with Middle Eastern and Armenian folk musical sounds and styles into a heavy metal, progressive rock sound. I would say he achieved his goal with the release of ‘Co-Exist’. The album came out on December 29, 2020 in the States and in Japan was released on March 24, 2021 which is the copy I have complete with the precious OBI Strip.
How was Hovak able to create such a worldly sounding record? It was the amazing musicians he surrounded himself. And it is an impressive list to say the least. He had not one, but two bassists including Victor Wooten who is a master-class Jazz/Fusion bassist who has played with the likes of Bela Fleck and then rock & roll bassists extraordinaire, Billy Sheehan who has played with Jeff in Sons of Apollo along with Mr. Big and David Lee Roth. On keyboards, he brought in Murzo (aka…Ara Torosyan) who is an Armenian born cinematic music arranger.
Those guys are great, but he needed people to help capture that particular sound he was looking to achieve. For that, he brought in Avo Margaryan on the blul (which is an open-ended shepherd’s flute if you didn’t know…I didn’t) and Artyom Manukyan on cello. Not pictured in the album sleeve is another musician to help with the sound and that was Anahit Artushyan on kanun (I know what you are thinking..what is kanun…it is a horizontal harp, similar to a zither or dulcimer, I’m sure that helped a lot). And lastly, we need a drummer. For that task, he recruited Czechian, Roman Lomtadze, who is more than up for the task of beating the skins to make sure the rock & roll part of this band shined through.
I haven’t mentioned what Jeff does yet. Jeff, obviously, is on vocals. However, out of the 7 tracks, only 2 have vocals. So like his work with Yngwie, Jeff is here to add flavor to the music and although he isn’t on all the tracks, he is the only singer which is why I included this in the review series. If ‘Rising Force’ can be included, so can this one. And when you hear it, you will thank me for it as well.
Continue reading “Octavision – ‘Coexist’ (2020) – Album Review (The Jeff Scott Soto Series)”
2 Loud 2 Old Music 