Yeah, I was on a huge Zakk binge last month after putting an 81/85 in my Edwards, went through all the eras and my cut off point was right after the 2nd or 3rd BLS album. He’s very much like Petrucci to me in that their most on-fire playing was in their first decade of their career. Not sure if that’s a hunger thing from someone trying to prove themselves or they just got comfortable resting on the thing they know entertains people, but both lost the thing that made them special to me.
I’m not a fan of noodling. I love Vai, but going to a live show where he does 2-4 minutes of noodling between songs, I start dozing off. It’s exactly why I walked out of a Zakk Wylde “acoustic” show a few years back. I watched 3 songs and bailed. He plugged into his fucking pedalboard with an acoustic and used distortion and wah all over the fucking place, just mindlessly shredding. If I wanted to hear that I’d stay at home and pull out a metronome because it’s got the same entertainment value to me.
2:59 here, it was like this for 5 fucking minutes in between songs. (same show)
But damn that motherfucker can still deliver his old shit just fine. More distortion these days than I’d prefer for him, his NMT tone was fucking PERFECT.
More comparing to Petrucci, while Petrucci can still play his old shit just fine, he can play it ‘better’ than back in the day and that’s what kind of made it lose it’s spark, like on the original recordings he was pushing himself and 20 years later it’s so easy for him it’s just muscle memory. The feel ain’t the same.