And like all great showman, Satch goes out with a bang. After a brief electronic drum/handclapped funk intro, he and the rest of the band take off. Satriani's skills as a shredmeister are, by now, the stuff of legend, but on God Is Crying he reaches new levels of fluidity, dexterity and, above all, unfettered passion. Grand and glorious, this is one for the books.

Joe Satriani says:

"This song came right away. I was fooling around with prototypes of my Vox Big Bad Wah pedal, and the music just started happening. But as I started playing, I started to think about the concept of God. What is He? Why do we need Him? And then I thought, if He did come down to Earth, what would He think of what we’ve been doing for so many years? And I thought He’d probably cry. I don’t know if He’d be too happy about our lack of progress.

"I tried to make my guitar sound like it was screaming and crying to convey that. Overall on the record, I tried to get more by playing less. But that’s deceiving: it’s not about playing less, it’s about what you play if you play less. It’s all about choices. At the end of the song, I did go for the big ’rock moment.‘ What makes it so dramatic is created because I was intentionally holding back beforehand.”

For more on Black Swans And Wormhole Wizards and details of Joe Satriani's upcoming tour dates, visit www.satriani.com

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