Apparently this is a US pressing of the In the Name of Bach album released on a classical label. The only Masi-related stuff I'd ever heard before was the Downtown Dreamers CD on Metal Blade and some of the early Dark Lord stuff. I owned the Dark Lord CD compiling their early material for an embarrassingly long time before I even realized Masi was in the band--I thought of him more as a mysterious, flashily-attired guitarist who spontaneously materialized to appear in the "God Promised a Paradise" video, not realizing he had serious classic metal credentials.
This is not the neoclassical metal renditions of classical pieces (think some of Vitalij Kuprij's stuff) I was expecting at all. In fact, there's no metal or rock here, it's all straight up classical guitar versions of the Bach pieces. They're extremely faithful and it seems wrong to call them something like covers or renditions or interpretations--the liner notes even note how it was more important to Masi to adapt the guitar to the pieces than the pieces to the guitar. As a casual fan of classical music, I enjoyed it, although honestly most of the "classical" music I tend to actively listen to nowadays are very transformative 20th century interpretations of it by Walter Carlos, Isao Tomita, and the like. Still, I can see this being something I pick for a mellower mood.
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