With such a cheesy-sounding moniker, you'd half expect the guitar to be placed under the brightest spotlight. And guess what? That's exactly what happens!

It turns out that Shredding The Envelope is the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Dave Reffett, ex-student of the prestigious Berklee College of Music. In this, his/STE's debut release, Dave has invited tutors from the same college to showcase their talents on a bunch of songs he put together. These guest guitarists are big names as far as shred guitar is concerned and include George Lynch, Michael Angelo, Chris Poland (Megadeth, solo), Glen Drover (Megadeth, King Diamond, Eidolon), Joe Stump and Mike Mangini (Steve Vai, Annihilator, Extreme). Most of them have released instrumental guitar albums under their own name.

This album, however, is a 'vocal' one and it's Dave Reffett himself who undertakes this role. While his voice is way much better than other guitar gods such as Yngwie Malmsteen, Jimi Hendrix and Uli Jon Roth, it still sounds like an inferior Dave Mustaine to me. Also, while I admit it's the music that counts most of all, I can't fail to notice the misrepresentative artwork that envelops the disc. (The band moniker perhaps unwittingly offers a solution to that.)

As suggested, there's a lot of great soloing all over the album as well as some truly furious riffing. Regarding the latter, the closing part of the title-track is one of the more memorable moments. "The Call Of The Flame" encompasses all that is great about Heavy Metal. It's about guitars, but not just guitars.