The Undiscovered: Matt Cafissi

Matt Cafissi is a wickedly fast guitarist. The Italian shredder submitted a 10 track CD-R pressing of his release Extravaganza, and the CD is packed with high-tech guitar playing, Pentium III-speed soloing, blinding sweeps, and some occasional keyboard embellishments. The music is heavy fusion/metal/hard rock overall, with the occasional ballad ("Heartbeat") providing a break from the amazing histrionics on most of the tunes. Production-wise, you've got to love the sound of a distracting, incredibly light sounding drum machine to enjoy the music completely--music this heavy almost demands a live drummer to bring out the power of the material. Hopefully, Cafissi will hook up with a thrashing drum god and a producer familiar with hard rock for his next set of compositions. The man has guitar ability in spades, it just needs the right setting to be fully appreciated.

Matt started playing the guitar at the age of 18, influenced by bands such as Dokken, Lynch Mob and Dream Theater. He eventually began studying at the renowned Lizard Institute of Music in Florence, where Giacomo Castellano introduced him to new techniques and styles like jazz fusion and new age. Matt started composing his own music and put together five demo tapes which were heralded by Italian magazines such as Flash, Psycho, Metal Shock, Veceversa, 360 Gradi. He won "Top Demo" from the European magazine Metal Hammer. Matt recently finished his first self-produced CD, Extravaganza.

Cafissi plans to begin work writing tracks for his next CD, as well as continue to run GuitarChef, the first Italian guitar 'zine.

Matt Cafissi
Italy

Web site: mattcafissi.tripod.com