SOULFLY Guitarist MARC RIZZO Discusses Solo Career

Mark Carras of RockMyMonkey.com recently conducted an interview with SOULFLY guitarist Marc Rizzo. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Rock My Monkey: Your new solo CD, "Colossal Myopia", is about as far from anything SOULFLY as anybody would expect. Was that on purpose?

Marc Rizzo: Yeah. Basically it's a record that I've always wanted to make.
Growing up I've always been a big fan of instrumental guitar music, like Joe Satriani, and Steve Vai, and I've always been a big fan of DREAM THEATER, YNGWIE MALMSTEEN, and stuff like that. So I always wanted to do a record like that, of just straight instrumental guitar music. So I finally had the time and the chance, through Shrapnel Records, to make the record and just basically did it.

Rock My Monkey: A lot of people — I know myself, and also another person I sent your CD to for review — everybody I play this for is thoroughly shocked at how different this would be than anybody would expect. For those who have not heard your solo release, how would you describe how it sounds?

Marc Rizzo: It's a mixture of instrumental shred guitar music. It also has a heavy Latin influence, of Latin percussion, and salsa merengue type grooves with flamenco type guitar playing on top. So it's a total mixture of the two styles on one CD.

Rock My Monkey: The one thing that impressed me was kind of how you do, between the flamenco guitar and the more thrash type stuff, you kind of create almost like a sonic whiplash in a person's head, while still having the music flow. Which is more important to you? The drastic change, the contrast, or the flow of it all?

Marc Rizzo: Definitely that. I was trying my hardest to make it flow. I definitely wanted it to be something where it wasn't too much of a change between the transitions. So I definitely wanted it to flow between the different styles of music. And I think I came pretty close to getting it to flow good. But, yeah, I definitely like the flow of the two styles. I think the two styles are cool to hear, back to back.

Rock My Monkey: With so many different, drastic styles on this album, who are your personal instruments, and who got you to pick up your instrument?

Marc Rizzo: I grew up on a lot of the late '80s thrash bands when I started playing guitar. Obviously METALLICA, SLAYER, MEGADETH, SEPULTURA, stuff like that. Then I was also into all the other great guitar players like Joe Satriani, Yngwie Malmsteen, Al Di Meola, I'm a huge fan of, Paco De Lucia, and all the guys that are on Shrapnel Records, like Vinnie Moore, Jason Becker, Marty Friedman. So I definitely had a lot of different types influences, but definitely I was always into varied guitar based styles of music, whether it was flamenco or thrash metal. I was always into guitar-oriented music.

Rock My Monkey: Was there a specific influence that came first, like the flamenco or the thrash?

Marc Rizzo: Definitely metal. Definitely grew up on metal first. A lot of the metal I was listening to was definitely had different types of styles of guitar playing in it. I grew up on ZEPPELIN, too, which obviously, Jimmy Page did a lot of different types of music also on each ZEPPELIN records. There was always different types of music on one record. Even old METALLICA always had cool nylon string acoustic guitar parts. When I got into flamenco, it was kind of like a lot of the stuff I was listening to already had nylon string guitar on it. It definitely kind of just derived from that influence of trying different ideas.

Rock My Monkey: What do you think that your solo CD offers fans of the Shrapnel style cd that no other artist on Shrapnel has before? What makes your CD unique?

Marc Rizzo: I think all the guys on Shrapnel are amazing. When I signed with the label I was kind of taken aback because I never really considered myself really on that level of musicianship, like guys like Vinnie Moore and Jason Becker. I was blown away by those guys. To this day I'm still blown away by all those guys I grew up listening to, and still listen to. I would say my record is probably just, it's got the whole Latin thing to it, which hasn't really been done before. So that's kind of different. And also I think I kind of focus on songwriting a little bit more. It's not just all full blown shredding. I think there's parts on my record that are really just simple, catchy melodies, that you can even call like a chorus, or something, within the song. So I think, if you don't play guitar I think you're still going to love the record, because a lot of people have told me, that don't play guitar, that they walk away humming a lot of the melodies that are on the record. So I think those two elements kind of make it different than a lot of the other stuff that's come out in the past.

Rock My Monkey: I think for me the thing that kind of caught my attention — because I'm not a guitar player, so I don't listen to a lot of the guitar masturbatory CDs — but the one that really attracted me to it, and makes me keep listening to it is the fact that what you have there, on the thrash side of it is the riffs, whereas you use the flamenco as more of the shred.

Marc Rizzo: Yeah, that's true. That's true. It's definitely probably one of the more heavier instrumental records to ever come out. The rhythm guitars are definitely just as intricate as the solo guitars. So that's kind of different, too. Not too many of the instrumental guitar guys have put out a record as heavy this one. That just kind of felt natural to me, because I always grew up listening to a lot of heavy music, and a lot of death metal, too. I think all my influences came out on this record.

Check out the entire interview in text and MP3 format at www.rockmymonkey.com.