There are two reasons to go and watch a drummer taking the centre stage. One, how good he is as a musician, and two, who he makes this music with. And with someone like Virgil Donati, both are taken care of. He's mindboggling as a drummer and he always keeps good company. We reported about this great show with Frank Gambale and Bunny Brunell a while ago, and Virgil returned to this city with another Aussie guitar virtuoso in Brett Garsed (of Instructional Video fame, for all you guitarists).

Now, I had no idea what was in store for me. Only after the show started I realised this setlist was going to be full of familiar tracks. Virgil and Brett set out to play the whole of Planet X's latest album Quantum with help from pre-recorded bass and keyboard (Derek Sherinian) tracks. Virgil's drumming is a lot more busy and maniacal than heard on the recordings and it really helps fill out the gaps. Jaws were dropped with the way he handled all these inhuman time signatures and crazy pattens, and all, musician or not were thoroughly assimilated. Virgil plays with so much authority, it ought to be outright impossible to capture it in the studio.

Brett holds his end down fine really. He manages to hit the sweet spot as far as fusion-shred tones go, and his legato style playing goes from quirky melodic motifs with big vibrato to full on shred across the fretboard. His hybrid picking style is put to good use, and he always manages to hit that note when needed. His phrasing is fluid and there's always some Allan Holdsworth-school ideas he'd throw in, as if things weren't exquisite enough already.Still, wouldn't have hurt to have some of those blazing alternate picked shred runs once in a while.

As mentioned above, the setlist consisted of Quantum in its entirety and also included an equally scary tune from Brett's latest solo album. Planet X's purpose is quite straight-forward. They are out to create the most challenging prog-metal-fusion instrumentals. But as Chacko aptly pointed out in his review, unlike Derek Sherinian's solo projects, where he writes the songs but lets his favourite guitarists rip, keyboards are a lot more upfront here. You know what that means in metal? Weak or lack of guitar riffs. You have super technical mixed meter shit going on bar after bar and this band really suffers from not having interesting riffs and rhythm guitars over these parts. Polyrhythms on one end and the guitarist simply doing one-chord stacatto chug on the other just doesn't cut it for me.

Adding to it, this is a really low gain tone and as a result, the prog metal bits simply fail to blow one away. They need to add a metal guitarist to the lineup who can lay some mean riffs and it'll automatically lift these songs to the compositional level comfortably occupied now by the likes of Ohm and Art Metal. That, and even though the recorded keyboard tracks were played, a lot of the parts were just buried in the mix so things sounded rather empty there. Derek should've been there!

Another thing I didn't know about the show was, it was sposed to have been a concert/clinic. That of course meant one thing - after the liberal ass ownage that was the 20 minute drum solo, Virgil went on to demonstrate how he toys around with your regular 4/4 beats and makes them sound completely wacky. This alas, was for the benefit of a few in the audience, and I for one would have definitely gone for a couple more songs in place of this and a separate clinic for these drummer types. The band resumed after a short tip from Brett to the guitarists struggling to play across the neck, but you've got to keep these clinics and shows separate because for every "OMG PORTNOY XOXO" 18 year old kid, you're going to have a hundred adamant grownups that have no interest in learning how to do all this, but are there just to see the pros do it.

All gripes aside, this is a must-see for all you virtuoso fans and especially for those who've already heard the album in question. You simply have to be there to witness these guys pull off songs like Alien Hip-Hop, Poland, Matrix Gate, Snuff, Kingdom of Dreams and Quantum Force live with absolute effortlessness.

Venue: Chowdiah Memorial Hall, Bangalore, India
Date: 6th August 2008