Beethoven's Guitar Shred DVD Review

By Prairie Miller

Move over, Jamie Foxx. The Soloist's insanely genius Julliard apprentice is up against some formidable competition, and she's female. Part classical music remix maven and part speed metal manic musical mime, The Great Kat is basically showing the male competition how it's done, better and faster.

More female chauvinist than feminist, Kat, aka Katherine Thomas, is best described as a 21st century Janis Joplin who breaks out of the conventionally assigned gender role limitations of acceptable female behavior, creatively and otherwise, to give the historically male dominated music scene a woman's energy and edge. And her raging, fast forward in real time Beeethoven's Guitar Shred is like nothing that has come before. Though Kat's monarchistic self-proclamation as inventor of a one woman revolution does tend to clash ideologically with her broader egalitarian claim of liberated classical music for the masses.

Alernately donning pink ribbon decked assorted retro-Victoria's Secret knockoff period cleavage with bloody leather wear, burkas and crucifix tattoos, Kat slings manically fuming guitars and violins on stage. And each of seven video vignettes tells a forcefully lunatic fringe, compelling musically reinvented tangy tall tale, shedding somewhat imaginatively deranged new light on a mix 'n match medley of Beethoven, Bach, Abu Ghraib and Islamic insurgency.

A classical/metal lovers everywhere wakeup call, these mini-musicals for guitar, violin and machete could very well blow your mind, but hopefully not your ear drums. Consuming the multi-sensory tripping Great Kat Experience at low volume is highly recommended.

TPR Music
Unrated
3 stars

DVD Features: Seven Shred Videos; Hot Shred Bits 2; Shred Geniuses; Metal Fugue: Bach's The Art Of The Fugue; Shred Cartoon.

Shred Online: GreatKat.com, BeethovensGuitarShred.com.

Prairie Miller is a multimedia journalist online, in print and on radio. Contact her through NewsBlaze.