Steve Kaynan first picked up the guitar at age 7. At 15, he won first place in the “Extreme Guitar Challenge” at Mars Music in Orlando. On his 19th birthday, he bought a plane ticket and headed to Los Angeles where he played regular shows at the world famous Sunset Blvd. clubs, The Whisky A Go-Go and The Roxy. In 2008, Steve was featured in Guitar Player Magazine, in which the editor praised his original work and guitar playing. He plays 100 plus shows a year with working cover band Bar Fly, and is a guitar teacher as well.
This year Steve Kaynan released his 2nd album, entitled “Multiverse Collision.” The 11-track album includes 2 songs – “Hook” and “Nefertari” – from 2001. Steve performs all the guitar, bass and vocal tracks. This release finds Kaynan in full stride, settling into each instrumental seat with conviction, and it is fair to say that from a musical standpoint this album marks a sign of excellence for Steve Kaynan.
Everything is in place – the songs are melodic and accessible, the lyrics and vocals are positive and inspiring, the chops are evident yet not excessive. It’s pretty much everything fans love about rock without all the excess. In fact, this is a great collection of songs that have an epic feel. And there are a few heavy metal moments here as well, along with a few nods to the progressive rock era. The magic here, though, is in the catchiness and melody driven nature of the songwriting.
Steve Kaynan is a consummate guitarist. It’s definitely the thing he does best on the album, so everything he delivers here is top notch – solos, leads, heavy riffs, etc. Kaynan can play at mind-boggling speed, with machine-like precision – but more importantly he plays beautiful and memorable melodies with a very soulful touch and a wide variety of killer tones. Sure, a lot of my friends say he sounds like other players (Satriani, Vai, Morse, etc.), but who the hell cares, the guy is amazing, and all his compositions here are just as worthy as anything else in this genre. Truth is Steve Kaynan is an extremely versatile guitarist with a solid technique. Moreover, his immense melodic control over the fret board does not render him a mere shredder.
Epic guitar and songs for the guitar lover are plentiful here, but Steve Kaynan delivers a lot more too. There are pure adrenalin-pumping, classic hard-rock vocal tracks such as “Mirrors”, “Time”, “My Way”, stuck in between the guitar soloing standouts like, “To Infinity and Beyond”, “Isla Nublar”, “Multiverse Collision”, “Pyramid Lake” and Forgotten Season”.
Truth be told, despite dipping into the rock n’ roll and metal well, “Multiverse Collision” is a fairly progressive album and it requires an attentive listener to fully comprehend everything that it is about. Many of these songs are harmonically diverse with complex arrangements, tempo shifts, and utterly fascinating developments with twists and turns that somehow never cross into the pretentious. Instead, the process strikes as organic and most of these tracks attain a very impressive and natural flow to the ideas at hand. Let Steve Kaynan take you on a journey far away from what has happened to rock music since its heyday and enjoy every last minute of it!
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