A guitar-driven rock record from ESD delivers an array of tonality and character and with each song on the record you get a little bit of a different size of the drive behind it all ranging from classic hard rock to blues, vast and cinematic sounds, and so much more.
The Shades of Blue EP boasts a lot of heart and a pure love for the craft, and I don't just mean playing the guitar or singing, I mean songwriting in general and being able to put something together that delivers different sides of the artist persona and serve as an ode to his influences.
One of my favorite aspects about this release is that it has some outstanding courses that stay bouncing around in your head for hours or even days after the song is ended and it really does back in that classic hard rock and metal undertone a lot of the time.
The songs have a way of feeling alive and breathing as the verses can be a little more subtle and then explode to huge choruses and I love that fact because everything hits a little bit harder this way.
It also shows that the artist knows exactly how to arrange a song so that you find yourself singing along by that last chorus and to me that's just smart songwriting, but I think for ESD, it's just how he writes the music.
I can't express enough how outstanding the guitar work on this record is and how tasteful everything comes through from the riffs to the lead parts.
He's got that real lose soul that comes through when those solos come in and you find yourself just getting entranced by them.
These are tasteful parts, and they complement the song perfectly as they're not super-duper overblown but again, tastefully performed with a lot of heart and soul so that it adds to the drive of the songs.
You also have just straight up classic blues tracks in here that start with very freeing and open introductions that let him show a different side of the songwriting and the guitar playing as well and those are the ones that come through with that more of that cinematic backbone I spoke of earlier.
The thing about a lot of this record is that the energy on it feels almost like a live performance as if the players on the record of feeding off of each other the entire time.
Of course, seeing that it's all performed by one man, these were not live performances.
All of these songs are written, and performed by frontman and of course guitarist, Eloi Dias who takes the time to compose these tracks and arrange them.
What I can tell is that this guy was born with a guitar in his hands, and I'm so refreshed after listening to the record because I miss real soulful bluesy guitar solos and classic hard rock material to put my fists in the air and sing along with.
The aesthetic is nailed the entire time, and the songs feel like songs you could have been listening to on rock radio stations for decades.
There's a little bit more than meets the eye for this release and a few great surprises around the corners and it all shows such a great presence for this artist as a songwriter and a performer as well.
This one is for people who love real-deal blues and classic rock sounds that give you a little bit of nostalgia and make you feel good.
The release is 100% genuine and I'm definitely going to be keeping a close eye out for whatever ESD comes up with next.
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