Indholdsfortegnelse for March 2023 i Guitar World

VOL. 44 | NO. 3 | MARCH 2023 ODE TO THE OTHER GUYS YOU MIGHT BE staring at the cover, bellowing, “Jimmy Page — again?” Which is funny, because I actually think of this issue as being dedicated to “the other guys,” which is partially the result of my recent “Enough already with this [frequently covered guitarist/band]!” attitude. First of all, you’ve got your King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, an Australian band that’s been raising eyebrows (and bank accounts) with their eclectic mix of everything-including-the-kitchen-sink rock. You’ve got Mercyful Fate, who recently spawned “The Jackal of Salzburg,” their first new tune since 1999; then there’s Dave Davies of the Kinks, Jim Babjak of the Smithereens and a Philly band called Doll Spirit Vessel, not to mention Blake Ibanez and…

TUNE-UPSNEWS + NOTES Q: What was your first guitar? I got my first guitar in 1969 when I was 12. It was a cheap Teisco that came with an amp made out of plastic. Both didn’t last very long. The strings were so far away from the neck, it was horrible. I probably would have learned to play better and quicker if I had a better guitar as it took me many years. A couple years later, I got a Gibson SG-200 — and that wasn’t so great either. Q: Do you remember your first gig? It was in 1971; I was playing that SG-200 at an eighth-grade dance. I was a freshman at high school at that point. The band was Cold Steel or Back to Earth — I…

Q: FROM ELVIS COSTELLO TO LARKIN POE TO YOU “When we were touring with Elvis Costello, we were eating lunch and he was expounding on the importance of not putting yourself in a box,” says Larkin Poe’s Rebecca Lovell. “He is the perfect example of an artist who has had an incredibly diverse career. He does whatever he wants to do, and the thread that connects it all is that it’s Elvis Costello. He was telling us, ‘People will try to attach specific genre tags to you. Keep them guessing. Just go where your heart tells you to go. Let your fans trust that you’re going to curate something that they will love regardless of genre.’” — Jenna Scaramanga Q: KANE ROBERTS ON RETURNING TO ALICE COOPER’S BAND “So, what…

WITH HIS LONG black hair covering his eyes and much of his face, Arch Enemy founder Michael Amott sports a wide grin that belies the savagery of the band’s melodic death metal as he saws into his white blood-spattered signature Dean Tyrant Bloodstorm guitar. Whether rooted in place next to vocalist Alissa White-Gluz, swaying along with fellow Swedish extreme metal veteran, bassist Sharlee D’Angelo, or playing back to back with guitarist Jeff Loomis, Amott unfurls rapid-fire riffs and sky-piecing solos with equal finesse, delighted to be onstage again in front of thousands of fans. This particular gig, August 14 at the Alcatraz Festival in Kortrijk, Belgium, comes two days after Arch Enemy released their 11th studio album, Deceivers, one of the band’s strongest and most eclectic offerings — which is…

SOUNDCHECK A FEW MONTHS back when Strymon announced new V2 versions of six of the company’s most popular small-format pedals, the response from the guitar community was a mix of excitement and confusion (what else do you expect these days?). Many dedicated Strymon users who had happily owned the original versions for years were puzzled why they’d want an upgrade as the pedals sounded fine as is, while equal amounts of players anticipated new features that would unleash previously missing performance capabilities. Oddly enough for once, both sides were kind of right in that Strymon’s new V2 pedals sound the same as their predecessors, but they also offer a significantly expanded range of performance and ergonomic features that make the upgrade totally worth it. The Strymon V2 range currently consists…

THE YEAR 1987 brings to mind certain memories for me: I had hair down to my waist; a Superstrat with one humbucker and a Floyd Rose; a kickin’ hair metal band; Def Leppard, Whitesnake and Guns N’ Roses blaring from my speakers and well, come to think of it, not much else. Don’t get me wrong, it was an adventurously fun chapter of my youth but also a time of self-reflection, as in, how much longer will this “nothin’ but a good time” last? All the same, it didn’t matter. At some point, I moved on, but for others, the party is still raging. Take, for example, hair metal thespians Steel Panther, who have managed to continually keep the music and debauchery of the Sunset Strip alive and well in…

LAST MONTH, WE began our look into the song “That Day Came,” released originally on my 2016 album, Theme from a Perfect World. “That Day Came” is performed in a chord-melody style, which means that individual melody notes are supported with additional notes, such as lower bass notes, chords or two-note dyads, which serve to fill out the harmony, making the implied chord progression of the song clear to the listener. Last month, we looked at the first eight bars of the song, so let’s pick up the composition from bar 9 and continue through the next eight bars, up to bar 16. FIGURE 1 illustrates the second eight bars of the initial verse section of “That Day Came,” starting on a somewhat unusual Bb(#11) chord. This second half of…

STAY CONNECTED WITH GUITAR WORLD ON AND GET THE LATEST GUITAR NEWS, INSIDER UPDATES, STAFF REPORTS AND MORE! Got something you want to say? EMAIL US AT: GWSoundingBoard@futurenet.com READER ART OF THE MONTH If you’ve created a drawing, painting or sketch of your favorite guitarist and would like to see it in an upcoming issue of Guitar World, email GWSoundingBoard@futurenet.com with a photo of the image! DEFENDERS of the Faith Rich Thomas AGE: 53 HOMETOWN: Motown, WV GUITARS: EVH Circles, Peavey Wolfgang Deluxe, Epiphone JB Les Paul, Fender Telecaster, Epiphone SG Pro, Fender Stratocaster SONGS I’VE BEEN PLAYING: Alice in Chains “Man in the Box,” Pantera “Walk,” AC/DC “Back in Black,” Van Halen “Eruption” GEAR I WANT MOST: EVH 5150 III EL34 half-stack, Schector Synyster Gates with Sustainiac Peter Selgrad…

Jimmy Page [left] and Rory Gallagher hang out backstage at the Pistoia Blues Festival in Pistoia, Italy, July 16, 1984. Page performed as part of a tribute to U.K. blues great Alexis Korner, who had died that January at age 55. Gallagher played a full set that included “Double Vision,” “Shin Kicker,” Freddie King’s “I’m Tore Down” and Muddy Waters’ “I Wonder Who” — DF FIND YOURSELF JONESIN' FOR SOME ART? In early December, Epiphone announced their new Adam Jones Art Collection, a series of seven limited-edition Les Pauls — limited to 800 units apiece — that each boast a different piece of fine art, as selected by the Tool guitarist. The first of these models is “The Veil of Bees” [above] which features some eye-catching artwork by Mark Ryden.…

THEY’VE MADE 20 ALBUMS IN 10 YEARS. and they’ve had three new albums — yes, three — released in late 2022 alone. But there is method in this madness, as King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s affable vocalist, co-guitarist and head honcho Stu Mackenzie explains. “There’s always a plan when we make an album,” he says. “Sometimes it’s still being formulated throughout the process, and sometimes it’s more of a mission statement, a manifesto. Usually we’ll have a couple of songs that have one vibe and some that have another, so we join the ones that have similar themes then write more songs like that. It’s like we’re creating brothers and sisters for them.” Since their 2012 debut, 12 Bar Bruise, this Melbourne, Australia-based collective have populated their “Gizzverse” with…

CHECK OUT ANY late-night talk or weekday morning show that features musical guests, and chances are you’ll see one of the musicians playing a D’Angelico. Since the historic company roared back into the public eye more than a decade ago, D’Angelico has made great strides in reimagining its line of heritage archtops and contemporary semi-hollow and solid body designs, as well as putting their instruments in the hands of established and up-and-coming artists. Frankly, who could have predicted that these guitars — with their Art Deco-inspired appointments and jazzy signature headstocks — would become so prominent? Building upon their broad line of guitars, D’Angelico has been releasing a dedicated variety of Limited Edition models that display arresting finishes along with premium pickups and updated specs that promote these instruments from…

GUITAR PLAYERS ARE well aware that three of the most reliable techniques for creating expressive solos are string bending, vibrato and the combination of bending with vibrato. One exceptionally cool and useful bending technique is what’s known as an oblique bend. This is where you play two notes on two different strings and bend one while the other remains unbent. A basic example of an oblique bend is a unison bend, which is performed by bending a note on one string up to match the pitch of an unbent note on the next higher string. For example, fret a D note with your ring finger on the G string’s 7th and an E note with your index finger on the B string’s 5th fret; sound the two notes then proceed…

THIS MONTH, I’D like to cover my song “Pusher,” which I had originally recorded for my 2014 album, Over Your Head, but I’d really like to talk about the version I include on my new album, Live at the Spud. “Pusher” is a cool, syncopated 12-bar blues tune in the key of G, and it features some interesting twists and turns along the way. When I play this song live, I do my best to take advantage of the many different ways to improvise on the tune, and that’s what we will get into over the next few columns. The main theme of the song is illustrated in FIGURE 1. Playing in straight 4 time against a funky groove, I begin with a hammer-on from F to G on the…

BELOVED CROSSOVER THRASHERS Power Trip were poised to return the heavy metal crown to their hometown of Dallas, where their forebears Pantera created some of the genre’s most brutal riffs and grooves in the Nineties. But then the unthinkable happened. Two and a half years to the day after releasing their now-classic 2017 album, Nightmare Logic, vocalist Riley Gale died of an accidental overdose on the eve of a European tour with Lamb of God and Kreator. When the news broke, guitarist Blake Ibanez, who was responsible for the bruising riffs behind Power Trip’s whiplash hardcore, put down his guitar and didn’t touch it for months. Ibanez had formed the band with Gale in 2008, and the loss left him directionless and reeling. “At some point I just was like,…

THE SEVENTIES WERE defined by the earliest wave of proverbial guitar gods — giant-slayers posturing at the stage’s edge, casting their lurid spells over unwitting audiences. The preeminent choice of magic wand? The Gibson Les Paul. But as the Eighties surged, the Les Paul’s fall was steep. Coinciding with that tumble from grace was a rise to prominence for technicolor, hot-rodded rigs. These seemingly mutant creations crafted in presto guitar labs were suddenly slung over the sweaty shoulders of droves of MTV-era icons. Through synchronized bombast, this new generation of heroes wielded Jacksons, ESPs, haywire B.C. Rich rigs and eye-catching Ibanez JEMs. There was, of course, one notable exception: Slash, who is widely credited as saving the single-cut during the shred era. The Nineties would also prove challenging for the…

The album opens with an insane, virtuoso Eddie riff, daring you to try and play along. From there he drops us down and dirty into the ’Halen “Mean Street.” The riffs are menacing, the lyrics nihilistic and the grooves taut and funky. “Dirty Movies” flashes a prom queen turned porno queen, then segues into the standard Van Halen breakdown with David Lee Roth encouraging her to “take it off, take it all off.” Check out the third song, the double-timed “Sinners Swing!” A woman chases our humble ’Halen narrator. Does he want her, or does she want him? The shadows are never clear on this album. And Eddie is at his guitar meanest, sounding as if every track was was recorded late at night, cigarette in headstock and head down.…

GEAR ACQUISITION SYNDROME — or G.A.S. for short — is a term that describes the seemingly uncontrollable impulse to buy — you guessed it — gear. It’s that insatiable rush that invades every cell in your being, convincing you that you need to buy that guitar. That you need to buy that pedal, or if you’ve got the real estate to back it up, the half stacks, full stacks and all the amplifiers and combos you can get your hands on. But why? How did this start? And what triggers it? Is it a bad thing? Is it a good thing? And is it even a “thing” at all? We did some research to clear the air and dispel the myths surrounding this fascinating phenomenon plaguing seasoned guitarists and unsuspecting…

AS MENTIONED PREVIOUSLY, I’m currently recording a 20th anniversary follow-up to my 2003 album, Blues Deluxe, which will be titled, appropriately, Blues Deluxe, Vol. 2. One of the songs we cut for this record is a cover of Pee Wee Crayton’s “Win-O.” I love that song! In my humble opinion, Crayton is one of the most underrated bluesmen of the 20th century. He did most of his recording in the 1950s, and “Win-O” was recorded in 1954 and released on Imperial Records. Pee Wee had a great guitar, one that now finds its home in the blues museum down in Memphis. It’s a Fiesta Red Fender Stratocaster with a gold pickguard, made in 1955. When we cut our version of the song, we approached it like the original recording but…

“THE DYING SONG (TIME TO SING)” Slipknot SLIPKNOT GUITARISTS JIM Root and Mick Thomson unleash a fierce barrage of their band’s signature pummeling metal riffs on this up-tempo juggernaut. Using drop-D tuning, transposed down one and one half steps — what many refer to as “drop-B” tuning (low to high: B, F#, B, E, G#, C#) — the masked marauders of metal strike hard from the get go, showing no mercy as they lay down a sinister low-register intro riff built around the open 6th string, which sets the stage for the song’s 1st verse that commences at section C. When playing these riffs, and all those that follow, you must downpick all the non-legato eighth notes, meaning all those that are not articulated with a pull-off, hammer-on or finger…