Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2022 i Total Guitar

I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned during my many years on TG that I own a late-90s Ibanez S540 J-Custom in a stunning multicoloured Japanese lacquer finish. It’s a rare guitar. I blew a chunk of my student loan to buy it. The svelte body and slinky fretboard made it the ideal axe for me in the early noughties when I was fiercely working on my shred chops. In recent years however, the guitar has spent an awful lot of time in its case. I kinda feel sad about that – it’s a beautiful instrument that deserves to be played, but there are only so many hours in the day and, of course, it’s not my only guitar. The reason I’m telling you this is that I’ve been inspired…

The story goes that when Black Sabbath were jamming material in their early days, bassist Geezer Butler was noodling around on the main theme of Mars, The Bringer Of War, from Holst’s The Planets. He played the tonic note (G), the 5th (D), then, crucially, the flattened 5th (D b) that gives Mars its dissonant, menacing feel. With his ears pricking up, the band’s guitarist Tony Iommi then adapted it – G, G an octave up, then that nasty D b in between – thus minting the riff for Black Sabbath. The opening song on their 1970 namesake debut album, the band’s self-titled song would not only define them, but also the crunching sound and doom-laden occult atmosphere that legions of metal bands have explored ever since. Emerging from the…

In early 1986, James Hetfield was in bullish mood, talking about the new Metallica album as it was being mixed at Amigo Studios in Los Angeles. “I know that on this album the fast ones are some of the fastest we’ve ever written,” he told Sounds writer Steffan Chirazi. “We’d never try to forget what Metallica formed for, no way. It’s just that maturity in style breeds better material all round.” The album in question was Master Of Puppets, and its title track was everything that guitarist/vocalist Hetfield promised. It was fast – 220bpm at peak velocity. It had a sense of artistic maturity in its epic scope and dramatic twists and turns, playing out over eight-and-a-half-minutes through several tempo and time signature changes. It was a guitar onslaught incorporating…

It wasn’t a single, but Eyeless was the track that first got Slipknot noticed outside of America. Its inclusion as one of the last tracks on a Kerrang! covermount CD in March 1999 attracted much of this early attention, mainly thanks to the song’s cross-genre appeal and brain-bursting heaviness, as well as the general sense of mystique surrounding a band comprised of nine mask-wearing unknowns. By the time they made their UK live debut at the end of that year, they were already headlining the 2000 capacity London Astoria venue and, suffice to say, they never looked back from there. The guitars on Eyeless were recorded by Mick Thomson and early guitarist Josh Brainard, who left the group not long after the sessions and ended up being replaced by Jim…

It takes a serious amount of guts to name a track The Heaviest Matter In The Universe, but in the case of Gojira, it’s a musical quality that’s never been doubted or questioned – the French quartet’s take on extreme metal undoubtedly deserving of such brazen hyperbole. This track from breakthrough third album From Mars To Sirius has served as a calling card of sorts, thanks to its head-twisting machine-gun rhythms and ferocious high gain thunder. With the opening riff evolving rapidly during its opening 15 seconds, there’s a lot to take in over a short space of time – a smorgasbord of palm-muted chords, pinched harmonics and single-note lines. Every two cycles, notes that were triple picked might then be double picked with different accents or mutes, each succession…

Epiphone’s Slash Collection celebrates influential guitars Slash has used during his career, inspiring multiple generations of players around the world. Designed for every stage and players of all levels, the Epiphone Slash Les Paul Standard features a mahogany body, maple cap with AAA flame maple veneer, a Graph Tech nut, Epiphone LockTone tune-o-matic bridge and Stop Bar tailpiece, and Slash’s personal touches including a C-shape neck profile, Epiphone Custom ProBucker pickups, colour-coordinated hardware appointments, CTS potentiometers with Orange Drop capacitors, Epiphone Strap Locks, and a custom hardshell case. Exclusive to the Slash Collection are Slash’s “Skully” signature drawing on the back of the headstock and Slash’s signature on the truss rod cover. All you have to do to enter to win this guitar is go to the web address below,…

American singer/songwriter/guitarist John Mayer’s acoustic technique and tasteful electric playing have earned him a huge and loyal fan base. He’s been an important and highly influential player in the new millennium, turning heads since his 2001 debut Room For Squares. I Guess I Just Feel Like is a heartfelt, introspective ballad that features on 2021’s Sob Rock album but was also previously released as a single in 2019. The acoustic rhythm on this track is played with a capo on the 2nd fret, enabling that classic open A to D/A riff to be transposed to B major. Grab yourself a capo if you want to strum along, or if you prefer to focus on the electric parts then no capo is required. We’ve tabbed the capo-less guitar solo note for…

Cast your mind back to 1996 and the height of Britpop, and there’s every chance this guitar will ring a vivid bell. Oasis had released their second album, (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?, ‘Cool Britannia’ was in full swing, and Noel Gallagher was busy reigniting the nation’s passion with playing a six-string. His Wine Red Epiphone Riviera played a huge part in this. Not only was it featured in the Don’t Look Back In Anger video, but it made an appearance in the promo for Champagne Supernova too, alongside loads of live performances. While Noel had plenty of nice guitars by this point, it’s for the reasons above that the Epiphone stood out to so many, and, crucially, fans could go and buy an Epiphone at affordable prices without having…

SCENE YOUR NEWS IN GUITARSALBUM After two top 10 albums, The Amazons are back with their most uplifting work yet – the sun-drenched, acoustic-tinged How Will I Know If Heaven Will Find Me? Fresh from showcasing the new songs on home turf at this year’s Reading Festival, lead guitarist Chris Alderton discusses his unwieldy pedalboard and a “deranged” solo. What guitar did you use most on the record? My main guitar, both live and in the studio, is a Duesenberg Caribou from 2015. Name three pedals you couldn’t have made the record without. I have a Fulltone OCD that I use as my main distortion and a JHS Muffuletta that I use on the ‘JHS’ setting – it always sounds massive. Is it boring if I go with three distortion…

Continuing its theme of collaboration with ‘boutique’ builders, the MXR Custom Shop has unveiled The Duke of Tone – a mini-sized OD pedal based on Analog Man’s Prince of Tone – the single-channel version of the revered (and difficult/expensive to come by) King of Tone. It’s got three modes, selectable via the toggle switch offering Boost/OD/Distortion. Elsewhere, the control set is kept simple with Volume/Tone/Drive knobs, and the pedal can be run in 18V mode for greater clean headroom from the boost mode. It’s shipping now, priced at £185.…

By 1978 there had been a number of pivotal feats of solo guitar work, notably Jimi Hendrix’s brutal, dive-bomb/feedback-heavy assault on The Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock in ’69. Ritchie Blackmore, Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi had all pushed the instrument into new realms. But then Eddie Van Halen came along and shifted the paradigm for lead guitarists in rock, metal, pop – hell, for anyone playing an electric guitar in any musical field – with his showcase moment on his band’s self-titled debut. It only lasts one minute and 42 seconds, but there was guitar playing before Eruption, and guitar playing after it. Eruption was a litany of dazzling techniques that reset the standard, all performed with the incredible dexterity, speed, personality and the high-gain aggression that would characterise…

PANTERA Pantera had already released four albums by the time they got to major label debut Cowboys From Hell, but this album’s opening title track would serve as the band’s mission statement for a new era of brutality in the 90s. Phil Anselmo had taken over from original singer Terry Glaze on previous album Power Metal, which saw a shift from glammy hair metal to Judas Priest-inspired heaviness. But it was on Cowboys From Hell that the band homed in on the groove metal sound they would become known for – a sound which would inspire generations of heavy bands to come. For the recording, guitarist Dimebag Darrell used his 1981 blue Dean From Hell guitar fitted with a Bill Lawrence XL500 pickup in the bridge and a Seymour Duncan…

Jim Root puts it very simply. “We’re not just playing metal songs,” the guitarist says of the new Slipknot album. “There’s so much more going on. There’s orchestration, melodic vocals and screaming, piano and samples and all these layers and music styles.” The End, So Far may not be Slipknot’s most accessible album, but it’s arguably their most eclectic, with ambient, effect-laden sounds colliding with chuggy, downtuned riffs, and tempos reeling from sluggish to torrential, often in the same song. This album, like its predecessor, 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind, is a schizophrenic hybrid of raging riffs, pop hooks, rhythmic variation and atmospheric interludes. Many songs have the aggression and intensity of Slipknot classics such as Pyschosocial, People = Sh*t and Duality. However, the new album opens with Adderall,…

ANIMALS AS LEADERS As one of the leading names in the tech-metal revolution of the late noughties, Animals As Leaders quickly ended up becoming one of the most universally loved and respected instrumental acts on the planet. Negating any need for a bass player, guitarists Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes employ eight-strings to cover a huge amount of sonic ground from the lowest low end to screaming lead tones high up the neck. In the process, alongside other bands like Meshuggah and Deftones, they’ve helped popularise the extended-range instrument – with Tosin now even running and endorsing his own company Abasi Concepts with great success. Physical Education, from the trio’s less metallic and more fusion-led third album The Joy Of Motion, helped establish them as a more musically diverse and…

CLASSIC TRACK Talk about fortuitous! This song, originally called ‘The Paranoid’, only exists because Black Sabbath needed to fill a three-minute gap on their second album. “We went to the pub, and left Tony [Iommi, guitarist] in the studio trying to come up with a suitable riff,” says studio engineer Tom Allom. “Later he came running over the road and told us, ‘I’ve got it, I’ve got it.’” As it turned out, Iommi’s excitement was somewhat justified. Paranoid is probably the band’s best-known song, a track that paved the way in-part for the entire heavy metal genre. At its core are a handful of simple but iconic guitar riffs, all fairly easy to play, so make sure to focus on getting them just right as you follow our tab. SOUND…

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Let’s go all the way back to 2007 – five years after Joe Strummer, legendary frontman of punk icons The Clash, passed away. In the world of guitars, ‘ageing’, ‘relics’ and ‘road wear’ were still relatively new terms, and guitar brands were dividing opinion by dedicating teams of people to unleash fury on brand new guitars by beating them up, creating rusted hardware and applying secret chemicals to create discolouration and patina finishes. In most cases, it cost a bomb too, setting internet forums ablaze with outrage. Fender’s Joe Strummer Telecaster bucked this trend slightly – at least in hindsight – by offering a Mexican-made Tele based on Joe’s ’66 original for circa £850, complete with an impressively-aged finish bringing the ‘ripped jeans’ option to the masses. Now, somehow 20…

Jeff Beck has long been one of the pantheon of greats, yet he remains an enigma. He first made his name playing in the Yardbirds, and alongside Page and Clapton forms the Holy Trinity of British rock guitarists. He has won a hat-full of Grammys and been inducted in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame (twice!), played with the likes of Mick Jagger, Brian Wilson, Stevie Wonder and – of course – Beck (no relation). But (Jeff) Beck still has mystery about him. He has constantly evolved; from his blues and classic-rock roots, he has navigated through funk, hard rock, jazz, dance... He stopped using a pick decades ago, and now has this dynamic fingerstyle that’s at once aggressive, full of rhythmic chutzpah, super-smooth and mellow. His phrasing is…

The new Machine Head album Of Kingdom And Crown is a jaw-dropping return to form that sits head-to-head with the Bay Area band’s classics Burn My Eyes and The Blackening. It is also the band’s first album with Polish guitarist Wacław ‘Vogg’ Kiełtyka, who remains a member of death metal outfit Decapitated. Machine Head’s leader, guitarist/vocalist Robb Flynn, discusses the impact of his new six-string partner and explains how Queen’s Brian May has been a huge influence on the band’s sound. He also reveals another unlikely inspiration for a new Machine Head song – reggae icon Bob Marley. Let’s cut to the chase – what’s the hardest riff to play on the new album? I think Become The Firestorm. There’s a lot going on in that one, like the tremolo…

One of Sweden’s premier metal exports, Arch Enemy are led by guitarist Michael Amott, who combines his love for classical motifs alongside ferocious heavy metal thunder on the band’s new album Deceivers. He tells TG how he was influenced by Michael Schenker and Dave Mustaine, and how modern technology has given him more flexibility in the studio. The new album’s opening track Handshake With Hell starts with some neoclassical tapping and also features some baroque-style chord movements. Those chord progressions are a very Bach thing to do. Sequences like that mean you can bring in the harmonic minor scale – ultimately, they’re melodic and help break you out of the standard blues or metal feel. Of course we had a big guy come out of Sweden once upon a time…

IRON MAIDEN Iron Maiden’s bassist and chief songwriter Steve Harris once said that, if someone had somehow never heard the band and wanted to understand what they were all about, then Hallowed Be Thy Name would be the song to play them. Metal Hammer magazine voted it Maiden’s greatest song in 2017, and it’s been a mainstay of the band’s setlist for over 40 years. And rightly so. The grand finale to 1982’s The Number Of The Beast, arguably Maiden’s greatest album, Hallowed Be Thy Name is a devastatingly effective combination of musical form and lyrical theme, delivered by a band at the top of their game, bubbling with chemistry and driven by the sheer onward force of metal. The relentless, dramatic tune tells the story of a man reflecting…

When Californian nu-metal pioneers Korn released Blind as their debut single in 1994, they were well aware they’d created something bold, powerful and new. That said, even by their own admission, they had no idea it would start a whole movement of heavy bands from the mid-90s onwards. And a sizeable amount of that sonic originality could be attributed to the instruments in the hands of guitarists James ‘Munky’ Shaffer and Brian ‘Head’ Welch – the very same Ibanez Universe seven-strings which had been co-designed by Steve Vai a few years prior, although rarely seen outside of the world of shredders. As Munky put it, Blind “hit people over the head with the sound of detuned seven-string guitars” in a way that was “like nothing they’d ever heard before”. But…

MASTODON There are numerous Mastodon tracks composed entirely out of top-tier riffs, from the early greatness of Blood And Thunder and The Last Baron through to more modern musings such as Andromeda and More Than I Could Chew. But, in many ways, it’s the second track and only single from their 2002 debut Remission that felt like the first big taste of the sound they’d become known for and later expand upon – mixing elements of sludge, groove and progressive metal in ways few had ever dared to before them. On March Of The Fire Ants, as well as other early tracks like Where Strides The Behemoth and Mother Puncher, they also helped popularise a tuning very rarely used in metal at the time, with the guitar dropped down a…

Cramp Your Style is Breakestra’s cover of All The People’s 1972 funk classic, featuring an iconic horn section riff which has been arranged for guitar here in Rockschool’s Grade Six version. To play the opening riff, strike the string with your picking hand, play the C# with your second finger and pull off to C natural on your first finger before hammering back on, without re‑picking the string. This ‘legato’ technique emulates the sound of the horns playing a series of notes in one joined up phrase. You can repeat the technique in bar 2, bringing in your third and fourth fingers for the additional notes in this bar. The arrangement combines single-note riffs with light, funky 16th‑note chordal strums, and you’ll need good picking control to master these changes.…

Córdoba are one of the biggest names in the nylon-string world and are no strangers to stage-aimed electro-acoustics, typically with thinner depth bodies and comprehensive pickup systems. But they’re calling this new Chinese-made Stage electro their first ‘electric’ guitar which reflects not only its thin, sealed body but also its high-tech pickup system: a nylon-string that’s a long way from its classical roots. Crisply constructed with a chambered mahogany back and solid spruce top faced with a posh-looking flame maple veneer, it’s only marginally wider than a Les Paul with a Fender-style depth of just over 40mm. It retains the classical-standard scale length of 650mm (25.59”) but the neck is not only thinner in width than a typical classical but the fingerboard is lightly cambered, not flat, although typically we…