I’ll say one thing for The Great Kat; she’s certainly not lacking in self-esteem. The guitar-shredding High Priestess of neo-classical thrash has not only claimed to be the reincarnation of Beethoven, but in what may well be my favorite rock quote of all time once said, “I am bringing my genius to idiots who cannot go out and reach it for themselves because they are too stupid.” If only all hubris were that hilarious.
Born Katherine Thomas in 1966 in Swindon, England, but raised in NYC, The Great Kat is a Juilliard-trained violinist turned thrash metal guitarist who has made it her mission to produce speed metal “reinterpretations” of classical works by the likes of Rossini, Beethoven (see 1990’s Beethoven on Speed), Vivaldi, Wagner, and plenty of others. I happen to find the whole idea knuckleheaded in the extreme, and the worst thing to happen to rock since that unholy triumvirate of Emerson, Lake & Palmer saw fit to adapt the works of classical composers for their own nefarious and unbearably pretentious ends.
I have always been disgusted by the whole raison d’être of progressive rock—namely that rock’n’roll is a childishly simple and primitive musical form that requires an infusion of classical elements—or classically trained musicianship—to elevate it to the level of “real music.” I happen to believe that three chords are two more than you really need to play great rock and roll, and such musical elitists/rapscallions as ELP and The Great Kat make me want to reach for my Killdozer. Elvis Presley said it best when he said, “I don’t know anything about music—in my line, you don’t have to.” There will always be a place for musicianship in rock music, but at bottom I concur with Johnny Thunders, who said, “Rock’n’roll is simply an attitude. You don’t have to play the greatest guitar.” You don’t have to know jack squat about the circle of fifths, Abdämpfen (I think this has something to do with dampening your sound, presumably by letting your guitar steep overnight in a vat of Dunkler Bock), or abandonatamente. You just need to know how to make a righteous din.
That said, I still admire the Great Kat’s pluck, and yes even her hubris. She can shred like nobody’s business, and what’s more she’s hot and happy to exploit the fact. She’s always in some state of undress, and frequently covered in blood, and on1990’s Wagner’s War she’s pictured wearing the only combat fatigues I’ve ever with a low-cut fringed top and a camo garter. Its touches like these that sometimes give me the suspicion her entire career may be a shuck. If so, the joke’s on me.
Anyway, The Great Kat usually plays guitar but sometimes plays violin, as she does on one cut in Wagner’s War. I love her credits on the LP; she’s listed as conductor, composer, guitarist (both lead and rhythm), lyricist, mixer, “primary artist,” producer, violinist, and vocalist, and is also credited with “screams.” That’s a new one. As for the rest of the band, Lionel Cordew plays drums, Jeff Ingegno plays bass, and “The Valkyries,” whom I picture as The Supremes in Viking helmets and pointy steel breast plates, are credited with vocals.
Lucky for us, The Great Kat doesn’t only play adaptations of classical works. She throws in her own songs as well, and they tend to be far less annoying, cloying, and boring. The odd thing about Wagner’s War (well, everything about it is odd) is that you’d expect it to focus exclusively on the works of the Bombastic Bore of Bayreuth, Richard Wagner. In fact she plays only one Wagner selection, in addition to snippets from the works of Franz “Piano Fuhrer” Liszt and violinist and composer Pablo Martín Melitón de Sarasate y Navascués, who was renowned throughout Spain for his interstate-length name.
LP opener “Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyries” is as bombastic as you’d expect, but it’s bigger on horns—and the vocal hysterics of The Valkyries—than it is on The Great Kat’s guitar, which is in there, but tuned more to the pitch of a synthesizer than your typical metal guitar. The song is faster than most, if not all, of the 2,000,000 extant versions of “The Ride of the Valkyries,” and at 1:34 I hardly see its point, but I suppose it’s been truncated to fit the attention span of your average metal head. Meanwhile, the fast as a V2 “War” features lots of screaming and a guttural voice repeating “Kill!” and some monstrous drums, to say nothing of heaps of shredding by The Great Kat, who in the midst of her superfast thrash finds the time to throw in some classical stuff, which I find more annoying than impressive.
The same goes for “Terror,” which opens with a baroque church organ but quickly morphs into one of the faster songs I’ve ever heard. Her guitar creates total carnage, and guttural guy croaks some, and there’s lots of shrieking. The Great Kat sounds like somebody turned the speed on her guitar from 33 1/3 to 45, and once again I’d be more impressed if her playing wasn’t so heavy on the classical-sounding riffs. Love the drummer, though; he plays like he’s being paid by the drumbeat, and he’s out to make as much money as he possibly can. “Punishment” is funnier than anything else; played once again at hypersonic speeds, it features some singing that goes from guttural to a mousy squeak in a New York second, and The Great Kat’s playing is all classical, like Andrés Segovia on crank, and I’m talking lots of crank. Meanwhile what sounds like a couple of monks intone some words, but most of what you get on this one is The Great Kat playing at about a 1,000,000 mph.
“Humiliation” is slightly slower, and features some almost cool vocals, while The Great Kat plays her guitar like it’s a car on the Bonneville Salt Flats. She could be the greatest guitarist ever, well probably not, but she would be a much better guitarist if she “de-classified” her style and just played like your typical metal guitarist. But then she wouldn’t be The Great Kat, would she? The instrumental “Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody” undoubtedly has poor Franz trying to claw his way out of his grave to put his hands around her neck. Love the bombastic opening, but after that it’s just The Great Kat thrashing her way through a melody that in my opinion is terribly ill-suited to her style of Autobahn speed riffing. Frankly, it sounds like bad cartoon music to my ears.
As for the LP-closing instrumental “Sarasate’s Zapateado,” it’s better than her take on Liszt, but not that much better. It opens like an ELP song, with a piano that evokes horrifying memories of Keith Emerson, then The Great Kat jumps in on violin and plays it at the speed that Nazi Germany conquered Poland. Forget metal; this is prog at its proggest, and I can’t even stomach prog at its least proggest, thanks in part to the ELP concert I attended after smoking but one measly joint, when any sane person would have smoked at least an ounce of weed and done some heavy, heavy downers (say of mix of seconal, placidyl, and ludes) before going to see the trio of terror that brought us “Fanfare for the Common Man.”
About the best thing to be said about Wagner’s War is that it’s short, even shorter than the War of Jenkins’ Ear. And speaking of ears, I would sooner lose both than listen to Wagner’s War, or any of The Great Kat’s other releases, which include Worship Me or Die! and Bloody Vivaldi. The Great Kat’s is a brand of music that flies in the face of everything I know about rock and roll, which is that it evolved from the collision of older genres of music such as African-American blues, jump blues, gospel, and jazz, and hillbilly western swing and country. I don’t see classical music in there anywhere, because it just don’t fit. It reminds me of the first meal my ex-wife, a German, ever served me. It was lima beans and sliced hot dogs in rice.
Some people may actually like lima beans and sliced hot dogs in rice, the same way some people actually seem to like the combination of classical and rock’n’roll. The Great Kat is for such people. As for me, I’d actually sooner listen to Foreigner (gak!) or The Police (yech!) or Yoko Ono (erk!) or Pentangle (ugh!). Or ELP even, because if nothing else, they gave us “Karn Evil 9” and “Benny the Bouncer.” And—Christ! Listen to me! Thanks to The Great Kat, I’ve actually been reduced to praising Emerson, Lake & Palmer! Time to turn in my blue suede shoes! Roll over Beethoven, and tell Tchaikovsky the news!
GRADED ON A CURVE:
D-
