A2z

At first there was AJH’s self-financed promo album “Stone King”, which gained positive reviews from various sources. The idea of this A2Z –collaboration started to develop shortly after the AJH album was released in September 2011.
Guitar luthier and AJH’s mainman Ari Hentunen and Tarot’s legendary axe wielder Zachary Hietala started to talk about doing something together after Zac heard the AJH-album and liked what he had heard. Ari and Zac have been friends for decades and nowadays Ari also builds Zac’s guitars, so there already was both musical and personal connection before they even started to discuss doing music together.
Zac’s seed to make an instrumental album was planted couple years ago, when he took part in instrumental compilation that showcased famous Finnish metal guitarists. The album was called “Guitar Heroes” and it included such musicians as Alexi Laiho, Roope Latvala, Emppu Vuorinen, Timo Tolkki, etc. Shortly after that Zac received suggestions to make a guitar album, but in that phase of time Zac
decided to decline the offer. Then these discussions with Ari took place and one thing lead to other - and an album just had to be made, no excuses for that!
Both Ari and Zac have their own distinct style of guitar playing and both of them have deep affection towards heavy riffs and strong melodies. This common ground made the songwriting process very easy. As guitarists, Ari and Zac complement each other wonderfully, both have quite similar style of playing as rhythm guitarists, but both in leads and melodic themes, have their
differences which can be clearly heard. Obviously, this is definitely a good thing in this case and these differences give more variety to the
final result.
Anyway, this isn’t the “usual guitar album”. There’s much more in this album than just shredding gazillion notes in a second! The main emphasis is in songs, beautiful themes, heavy riffing, mood changes and there is still plenty of room for stylish lead guitar playing to be heard.
Ari’s AJH rhythm section drummer Pekka Rinne and bassist Mika Rintanen were summoned to provide solid rhythm tracks. Both Pekka and Mika have keen interest towards progressively rhythmical elements and it’s not surprise, they brought some of this rhythmical essence to this cornucopia of melodies.
The final touch for this album was given by Marco Hietala from Tarot/Nightwish. Marco did some stunning acoustic guitar tracks for this album, which helped to complete this work of art. Hats off to Marco!
Not to be forgotten, Janne Tolsa from Tarot/Turmion Kätilöt, who did an amazing job by mastering the album and played additional keyboards on few of the tracks.