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From Reviewer Magazine:
Joe Granata / A Long Road to Hell (Castlerock Associates)

Ladies and gentlemen: meet Joe Granata; he's a one-man super-rocker. His debut solo CD, "A Long Road to Hell" is actually a pretty good CD to listen to on that Long Road to Hell - nice traveling music.

I don't know, I'm not a big metal fan, I usually just roll my eyes when I pop some death-speed-metal disc in the player and hear over-distorted barre-chords, anti-beat, double-barreled bass drumming and guttural screaming that is supposed to be, I guess, some kind of message, something that says "screw you guys, I'll be as annoyingly atonal and cacophonous as I can possibly be."

Not so, however, with "A Long Road to Hell." Joe G has some thrashing shit going on here, but it's done with a degree of aplomb not usually witnessed in the metal scene these days. The vocals can be grating at times, but are usually done comparatively well and the guitar ‚ whoa, dude ‚ he can sure make that axe scream and cry and do hair-curling, swirling solos.

The whole album was recorded by just Joe Granata who sang and played guitar & bass and his homie, Aaron Martin, who did a beat-sensation on the drums.

The song "Back to Life" slows things down a tad, but it is not any sort of ballad, just a brooding, quietly emotive kind of song, with a wicked, bluesy/rock solo towards the end.

Track 5, "As the River Flows" is a short, but beautiful nonsequitur, an "Embryonic Journey"-style acoustic guitar solo, a nice little bridge between the aforementioned "Back to Life" and the back-to-Metalland, the closing tune "Supersonic Shred," a six-minute instrumental jam that really showcases Granataís guitar power. I'íd say to Joe to keep at it and pretty soon weíll have a new guitar hero on our hands.

Yes, it's actually kind of a bummer, but this is an EP, after all, only six tracks. I'd like to hear more, myself. Hopefully there is a longer, full-length CD in the works and I will be keeping my ears open for it.