Milan Polak - Scarred To Perfection

Milan Polak

Scarred To Perfection

by YNGWIEVIKING at 04 May 2015, 2:41 PM

Like a Musical Chameleon Milan Polak is a man with 10000 faces, many artistic talents and a bunch of great guitars chops. Originally known as the lead axe player for the Austrian Metal hope NEW WORLD (1995’s “Changing Times”-Rock The Nations) and he had quickly went to enjoy a famous reputation as one of the most impressive Shredder of the early 90’s with some very interesting instrumental albums. One of the unique guitarist in the European territory back then able to resist the blistering assault of licks provided by Joey Taffola, Darren Householder, Marty Friedman and Co. In a collaborative ambitious studio project with guitarists Joel Rivard & Alessandro Benvenuti, he demonstrated his musical polyvalency in the Jazz/Fusion style with an amazing CD "J.A.M." that had reached number 2 in the UK Jazzwise Charts.

His two guitar albums “Guitar 2001” and its re-make "Guitar Odyssey" (re-released in 2005), along with the Lion Music debut "Dreamscapes" received overwhelming acclaim and amazing praise with great reviews worldwide, stayed in the top seller charts of Guitar 9 for months. In May 2008, Milan Polak was voted as one of the world’s 50 fastest guitarists by Guitar World Magazine.

Since then he played with Austrian Pop Star FALCO (RIP) for his comeback (yes, the same FALCO known for the worldwide hit singles “Der kommissar” and “Rock Me Amadeus”). Stretching to the max his musical universe before return to his solo career but this time as a vocalist!

Indeed, surprisingly in 2007 Mister Polak decided to move on and unexpectedly abandon the instrumental path. He went to New York City USA to record with the former legendary ARK rhythm section aka John Macaluso on Drums and virtuoso bass hero Randy Coven (RIP) both ultra renowned players who had a pretty long career (Y.J.MALMSTEEN’s RISING FORCE/TNT/RIOT). This resulted in the album "Straight" which featured Milan Polak for the first time on lead vocals as well and received some encouraging feedback by the worldwide community.

Once again walking a twisted road, in 2008 Milan also co-wrote and recorded some guitars for the album “Bastard” with successful act SUBWAY TO SALLY, which entered the German album charts at N°7 and was rewarded with many trophies…In fact June 2009 saw Milan Polak release another vocal album “Murphy’s Law” (with Fabio Trentini on Bass and Simon Michael on Drums) via Lion Music before switching to another unusual project in 2010 : a collaboration with Italian DJ/producer Drooid resulted in the EP "Aurora/Moon Dance" (Shah-Music Digital)…While still keep his agenda as a guitar instructor and band coaching at the University of Music & Art, in Vienna.

By the end of 2014, he signed a worldwide record contract with the German label POWER PROG under marketing collaboration with Universal. On March 2015, the first single "This Time" was released digitally, followed by the release of the album "Scarred To Perfection" which features Drums tracks by Dennis Leeflang or high profile appearance by Kip Winger , Fabio Trentini as guest on bass/Mixing engineer and sharing some lead guitar duties with famous session-player Neil Taylor .

After "Straight" and "Murphy's Law" (2009) this is the review for his new vocal album “Scarred To Perfection”.

His sincerity and artistic integrity is obviously a quality, his approach for the Melodic Hard Rock is based on a almost AOR tendency (the Kip Winger’s featured hit “You & I” and “Rainbow”) yet free from the stylistic constraint to fulfill his prowess as a good songwriter and vocalist (owner of a smooth melodic voice that which increases positively particularly the harmonics characteristics of each title) in addition to his guitar chops (like in “Cleansing”/”Final Song” and the title track) with tracks ranging from Modern radio-friendly Rock (“Belong”/”The Last Goodbye”/”Smile”) to riffs driven Heavy Rock (“This Time” and the raw ”No Compromise”) maybe still regressing to a more eclectic/experimental tone (the darker “Karma”/”Green Demon” ) or to a more progressive method at some points, an exclusive recipe rarely seen where virtuosity and infectious hooks in full catchiness are competing with an equal success in the final impact, with its attracting character on the melodic focus and its sonic result!

Recommended for the open minded Melodic Rock lovers, the guitar experts and the aesthetes music supporters!