The Great Kat has been rated as one of the top 10 fastest shredders of all time by Guitar One magazine. This is a fact that she and her DVD Extreme Guitar Shred will not let you forget. What do I mean by this? Well for starters, that quote is on all the DVD menus! Yes, it actually says “‘One of the top 10 fastest shredders of all time’ - Guitar One” on your screen at just about every moment. Are they correct in their estimation? Who knows. The fact is that The Great Kat is an extremely fast guitarist as evidenced by her music. She is also a virtuoso violinist and plays the violin on several tracks as well. This DVD suffers from many critical flaws.

The six videos contained on this disc are all under three minutes in length. The production budget seems to be lower than my weekly grocery budget. Each video is heavily edited for the ADD generation with split-second cuts, video effects and constant slow motion. One thing that really irked me about this disc was that I expected to see some great shredding but was let down. While she does play many solos, the video effects prevent you from really appreciating the talent. When John Petrucci or Steve Vai put out a home video, you can be sure that there will be unaltered close-ups of their guitar wizardry so those at home can sit there dumbfounded by the skill. The few shots we get of her picking are slowed down, covered in some weird polarizing filter or blurred out so that the skill is overshadowed by epileptic seizure-inducing flashing stroboscopic effects.

While The Great Kat certainly has some talent, the editing just ruins this for me. The cheesy sets of her videos like “Torture Chamber,” “Castration,” and “Dominatrix,” are exactly what you would expect. Fake blood abounds as do whips, chains and the usual metal video fare. The castration video will be especially hard for many men to watch, though most of the objectionable parts are mercifully blocked out. Her makeup and costumes are more outlandish in each successive video. The costumes are specifically designed to show off her cleavage and make her appear as nude as possible. My roommate who watched this disc with me was severely disappointed that there was no nudity involved. The “Zapatero” and “Live in Chicago” videos show her playing the violin as well as the guitar. She is quite talented on this instrument as well and we get more of an idea of her shredding ability from these shots than we do from her guitar shots.

The bottom line is that this DVD is softcore fetish pornography for anyone who desires a female guitarist that can shred fast. As a collection of videos, it sadly falls flat on it’s face. If it were re-edited for people with attention spans longer than that of the common salmon, we might be able to talk. No written review can do this justice.