Blurton released this set last summer as a digital album, and it is now getting its physical due. As is only proper.

While he's been wandering around the Canadian underground for decades, even someone as plugged-in as me has heard more rumor than music. I can only hope that this album changes that. Blurton doesn't so much combine influences as consume them. Blistering through hard rock trends of the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, Blurton's guitar never stands still.

Ian Blurton Future Now Signals Through the Flames (Pajama Party/Seeing Red)

These songs are often epic, but rarely anthemic. I mean if you're going to give them names like "The March of Mars" and "Night of the Black Goat", you'd better have the riffage to back that up. Blurton seems to have an almost endless supply of cheeky chords.

So if you ever wondered what it might sound like if Diamondhead played Black Sabbath (or Anthrax played Deep Purple, for that matter), Blurton offers a reasonable facsimile. What this reminds me most of, however, are Bill Ward's excellent (and almost forgotten) solo records from the early 90s. Adding a technical sheen to classic hard rock is almost never a bad thing, and in Blurton's hands it is often incendiary.

Not a time machine or museum piece, this album is a wonderful example of Faulkner's "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Something new that celebrates the old. Something that often approaches pure joy.

Jon Worley