Track Listing

1. Liberty
2. Erotic Nightmares
3. Animal
4. Answers
5. Riddle
6. Ballerina 12/24
7. For The Love Of God
8. Audience Is Listening
9. I Would Love To
10. Blue Powder
11. Greasy Kids Stuff
12. Alien Water Kiss
13. Sisters
14. Love Secrets

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22918 in Music
• Released on: 1993-10-11
• Number of discs: 1

From Amazon.com
The second solo album from Steve Vai shows the guitarist coming into his own as a composer, matching his prodigious talent as a performer. The result is an entertaining mix. The hilarious "Audience is Listening" complements more reflective pieces such as "For the Love of God." The high-powered "Animal" and "Greasy Kid's Stuff" are balanced by "Blue Powder" and "Alien Water Kiss." Unlike most guitar-god solo recordings, Passion & Warfare avoids the sort of technical noodling that is uninteresting to everyone except other guitarists, opting instead for a collection of high-quality music that is full of compositional experimentation without ever getting out of control. --Genevieve Williams

Customer Reviews

It's Instrumental Rock how can you not like it?
Well Usually i dont like a band or album because of the vocals, but i dont have that problem with this album cause it's just instrumental awesome rock. This album is filled with great solos and songs. No filler just all killer. If you like rock music and you're curious about this just buy it.

Landmark in guitar writing, perfomance and production
Showcasing a wonderful sense of range and versatility, a skillful mix of funky fast playing and a genuine sense of feeling, this is clearly among the best instrumental guitar albums of all time.
It's exciting and funny, mysterious, atmospheric, complex, full of breath taking twists and turns, and there is always something new to hear with each listening. This album finds Steve coming into his own as a composer, matching his prodigious talent as a performer, with deeply spiritual subject matter and some very emotive playing. While full of compositional experimentation, dynamics, unworldly speed, awsome techniques and great musical ideas, he avoids the sort of technical noodling, pointless guitar chops and messy shredding that is uninteresting to everyone except other guitarists. The greatest modern guitar instrumental album ever: "Weaving sonic tapestries from Hell" indeed.
Stand out tracks: Erotic nightmares, For the love of God, Audience is listening, I would love to, Greasy kids stuff

Indulgent and very dated
After being very impressed with another of Mr. Vai's albums, 'Alien Love Secrets', I quickly hunted down his most highly regarded album, Passion and Warfare. After an initial listen I wasn't very impressed, and after several listens I was even less impressed.

The problem with Passion and Warfare is that there is not much to offer anyone who isn't listening for guitar technique. Make no mistake, this is grade A shred guitar, but unfortuantly the song structure doesn't match Vai's pyrotechnics on his instrument. What this results in is a series of very confusing and difficult instrumentals. Surfing with the Alien this most definately is not (although that isn't what the album is trying to be). Whilst this style of songwriting was shown to work very well on a later vai track "Kill the guy with the ball", this album suffers by seeming much less focussed and unplanned.

All of this suffers even more so by sounding incredibly dated and cheesey. There is synth all over the place distastefully which has ended up making this the musical equivilent of 60's tower blocks ("It seemed like a good idea at the time..."). One would hope this would give the album some charm of the era, but its sadly not the case.

To be fair, there are moments of greatness and a few audio treats to be discovered on passion and warfare. 'For the love of god' is undoubtedly outstanding and remains one of the greatest guitar instrumentals ever written, and there are some great rock kicks to be gained from 'Erotic Nightmares' and 'The Animal'. Sadly, for each of these songs there are an equal number (if not more) of cringe inducing indulgent guitar tracks. Not that indulgent guitar is always a bad thing, classic shred songs such as the aformentioned 'Surfing with the Alien' and 'Scarified' deliver awesome guitar playing. The difference is that both of those are fun to listen to.

One other nice thing about this album is its structure, or more its concept. There are quite a few quirky things that show Vai did try to make the album more than just a bunch of tracks. Slogans and themes are repeated in a way not too disimilar to the "I'm mad, I've always been mad" voices on the Pink Floyd classic the dark side of the moon. Although this can also add to the dated sound of the album, it does make the cd a more admirable experience.

Overall, Passion and Warfare is a sadly dissapointing album which I couldn't recommend. There are far better examples of instrumental guitar to be found. I would however recommend "Alien Love Secrets" as it is brilliant showcase of what Vai can do when he turns down the indulgence knob from 11.