"A round of jaw dropping, scintillating electric guitar world marks Lethal Alchemy CD from French speaking guitarist Julien Carayon. In the realm of Planet X and Steve Vai, Carayon blows the roof off with the spaciously recorded, hard rocking instrumental sound of Lethal Alchemy. Hard rock it may be, but Carayon blends all manners of Euro-flavored jazz-rock and prog-fusion elements into the mix. What’s even more amazing is that Carayon performs all guitars and drum programming, yet it sounds there’s at least 3 people playing together. With his seamless, scary and scorching sounds, Carayon makes this modern day guitar fusion masterwork a pick to click. www.juliencarayon.com"

JULIEN CARAYON - "Lethal Alchemy" Julien Carayon's world is instrumental music, a world with no border as he plays no specific music style in mind...only what He gets with his instrument matter... He has almost ten years of guitar playing in his fingers. He's 99% self-taught (the remaining 1% is the very few instructional books he has bought so far). Julien Carayon trys to cultivate his own style, composing “non-80’s-style-shred music” and avoiding cliché. "Lethal Alchemy" is the thunderous debut album from the young talented guitar player Julien Carayon, who were inspired by icons such as "Dream Theater", "Liquid Tension Experiment", "Planet X", "Steve Vai", "Joe Satriani", "Pat Metheny", "Jimmy Hendrix"... He knows how to capture the real essence of guitar sounds, with a variety of musical techniques, showing a high degree of creativity and sensitivity, creating atmospheric songs with an epic instrumentation. So the instrumental is very progressive and very intense also, very heavy with a spirit of metal, adding symphonic elements such as an orchestra, something like an "Epic Symphonic Progressive Rock Metal". "Lethal Alchemy" has a big sound with a sense of adventure, while making our ears stand up. All music by Julien Carayon. There are no words to best describe the seven tracks on the album, but listen "Welcome to My Nightmare", "Parallel Dimension", "The Good and Evil Sides of Men", "Azur", "Angry God" and "Dark Jazz Song" and of course you will understand what I really want to say. Julien Carayon plays all Guitars, Programming, using Ibanez Guitar, Dean Markley strings and Dunlop Picks. For future music project, Julien Carayon is going to form a band to play an amazing Progressive Music. Brilliant and indispensable work, highly recommendable... Rating:8.5/10

France’s Julien Carayon's release “Lethal Alchemy” is an instrumental guitar release of a different kind. Whereas most instrumental releases are essentially Rock guitar players trying their hands at various different styles (Hard Rock, Blues, Funk, Folk, etc) using them to convey different moods, while using what is essentially a Metal approach to lead guitar playing (not that there’s anything wrong with that), “Lethal Alchemy” is basically a Jazz album showcasing Hard Rock influences. Instead of being a balls out shred record full of very intricate soloing, “Lethal Alchemy” is instead a multi-layered Jazz album with some Rock undertones. The songs aren’t pieced together via riffs, but instead the melody of the song slowly builds to a crescendo, with a lot of expressive guitar playing, and the sounds used are further used to achieve this goal. Due to the long songs, shortest one being “Heat” which clocks in at just under 7 minutes, the songs have a lot of time to develop and have a multitude of different motifs throughout, while the slow beat makes the songs slowly creep in from the background. It doesn’t punch you in the face, but instead slowly seeps into your ears. It’s as if each song was a small story, and the music is what propels the story forward. The problem is that after a while, the song styles don’t change that significantly. Each song has the same slow pace, all of the rhythm instruments being perpetually subtle while the lead instrument(s) play gorgeous melodies that sometimes go off into the territory of Jazz soloing. But NOTHING stands out after nearly one hour of this, the mood of the album never shifts, so the songs all wind up sounding the same, due to them all having similar musical qualities. Each song is well crafted and goes through ups and downs and the guitar playing is very emotive and expressive, but what’s missing is each song having individual characteristics, to break the monotony that is present throughout the album. Rating: 6/10 The guitar playing is very well done (the legato technique is amazing) and VERY expressive and Julien Carayon never overplays, but I cannot recommend this album on the lead playing alone. The songs, while very multi-layered with tons of little intricacies and many melodic patterns, add up to an album that is very one dimensional due to all the songs being in exactly the same vein. Rating: 6/10

Julien Carayon is a 27 years old rock-guitar player, with almost 12 years of guitar playing in my fingers; 99% self-taught, the remaining 1% is the very few instructional books he bought so far. His main music influences are Dream Theater - Liquid Tension Experiment -Planet X - Steve Vai - Joe Satriani, Pat Metheny - Jimmy Hendrix...Mike portnoy (for programming drum tracks ). Carayon spend hours listening to these Maestros, trying to cultivate an own style, composing “non-80’s-style-shred music” and avoiding cliché.... although many influences and a kind of a typical Joe Satriani sound can be found by listening to this album. Julien is passionate by instrumental music, a world with no borders and just plays what comes up in his mind. The production of this album is well done and sounds good but due to the fact that he produced the album by himself there are a few minor things that can be found (less of power sometimes and a mechanical feel by the drum programming). Although he’s young and talented enough to explore a wide range of techniques and styles. The positive thing on this album is that he reflects many music styles like rock, metal and prog. Carayon is going to form a progressive music band and with the right attitude I think Julien is going to surprise us with such a project. Rating: 7/10