Innehållsförteckning för September 2021 från Total Guitar

While enduring months without gigs, Don Broco hit the studio to create Amazing Things - an album that channels the angst of 2020 into stadium-sized riffs and stage-ready anthems. Guitarist Si Delaney discusses his gear and how to create tracks out of “pure gibberish”. What did you want to achieve when you started making Amazing Things? We wanted to keep the theme of heavy, banging live tunes. When we were writing, we were envisioning how it was going to hit live. That was the main focus because what gives us the rush is playing live and feeling the reaction in that environment. This record feels angrier than your previous releases. Do the lyrics influence the degree of heaviness you employ? It’s actually an interesting one because the lyrics are always…

Knives Knives, from Bullet For My Valentine’s forthcoming self-titled seventh album, features Matt Tuck and Michael Paget returning to their heavy roots with an onslaught of aggressive drop B-tuned riffs. The song opens with syncopated palm-muted powerchords, followed by a pedal tone riff that’ll require your best two-hand synchronisation. Played slowly, it’s not too much of a technical challenge – but the fierce speed of the recording means you’ll benefit from a sedate practice tempo. The opening downpicked powerchords are played with a repeating pattern that goes: chord, chord, rest. Though there are three rhythmic elements, they aren’t played as triplets, but are phrased as 16th notes to create syncopation. The melodic part of the riff is played on the sixth string, following the notes in the scale box below…

Few records in history have crossed over like The Black Album. Not only was this the defining metal album of the early 90s - it also had the melody, hooks, and polish to influence artists across the genre spectrum. And to mark its 30th anniversary, there is the The Metallica Blacklist – on which more than 50 artists from all over the musical map have contributed cover versions of this iconic album’s 12 tracks. Unexpected participants include Miley Cyrus (aided by friends including Elton John) taking on Nothing Else Matters, and Pharrell Williams’ outfit the Neptunes, who tackle Wherever I May Roam. It’s not limited to the Anglosphere either: Metallica’s global reach is underlined by artists from France, Mexico, Mongolia, South Korea and India. For guitarists, the Blacklist is a…

Welcome to the GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome*) Station! Every issue, TG scours the market for the hottest new gear and brings you transparent reviews that you can trust. From the smallest of accessories that make your life easier, to big investments, such as brand new guitars, amps and effects pedals – if it’s worth your attention, you’ll find it here! HOW WE TEST CURATION Our product selection is driven by our love of gear. We select the most exciting products on the market every month to bring you opinions you can trust. FACE-VALUE REVIEWS We’re not gear snobs here at Total Guitar. We judge it on whether it looks good, sounds good and plays well – not by the name on the headstock. NO SNAKE OIL You won’t find us…

EVH’s 5150 amp series transcended its signature model origin to become the top choice for metal guitarists defining their own sound. With the 5150 guitars, the brand aims to repeat that trick, creating reliable rock weaponry with appeal not limited to Eddie wannabes. These guitars also plug a hole in the EVH range. This is the first twin-humbucker superstrat from EVH, offering a major versatility boost over the single-pickup Striped guitars. “FLEXIBLE ENOUGH FOR ANY HIGH-PERFORMANCE ROCK APPLICATION” Notable features are the momentary killswitch, so you no longer have to destroy your pickup selector when covering You Really Got Me, and the body-mounted Floyd Rose with D-Tuna. Mounting on the body means no upwards motion with the bar (as Eddie preferred), but it arguably gives better tone because there’s greater…

No audience was present inside the grand old Los Angeles Theatre, but it was quite a show that St. Vincent delivered in her first livestream concert, Down And Out Downtown, premiered on August 4th and 5th. Backed by a new eight-piece band, she mixed six tracks from her current album Daddy’s Home with new interpretations of six older numbers, including the brilliant LA-themed break-up song Los Ageless. This month also sees her featured on The Metallica Blacklist covers album with an inventive version of Sad But True, in which she substitutes the heavy riff of the original with Depeche Mode-inspired electronica, but plays a guitar solo just like Kirk Hammett’s.…

This is a busy year for Gibson. As well as unveiling the Epiphone Slash Collection, we can expect other signature models including the Gibson USA Tony Iommi SG Special and also a Jerry Cantrell ‘Wino’ model from the Custom Shop. The Alice In Chains guitarist officially partnered up with Gibson at the beginning of last year and has confirmed more signatures are also in the making. The Custom Shop will also be handling the 1958 Korina V and Explorer models, made using 3D scanning technology to ensure they create “the most authentic and identical clones humanly possible”. The Collector’s Edition will be limited to 19 Explorers and 81 Flying V’s – as per the year they were originally made.…

Some combinations in life just work, and one of the greatest pairings in rock history is Saul Hudson and his Gibson guitars. Of course, we can’t all stretch to a USA model, so the man in the hat’s latest guitar releases are aimed squarely at the more affordable end of the market. The Epiphone Slash Collection is a seven-strong line-up comprising five versions of the Slash Les Paul Standard and two versions of the slash J-45. Both the LPs and acoustics are based around the same respective themes. In the case of the Les Paul that’s a classic mahogany body, capped with hand-carved maple; a mahogany neck and 24.75” Indian laurel fingerboard; Epiphone Custom ProBucker humbuckers (controlled by 2x volume/2x tone and featuring CTS pots with Orange Drop capacitors). Other…

Matt Tuck has been playing Knives on a Gibson Explorer Custom and typically uses high gain amps such as a Peavey 6505 boosted with a Tube Screamer type pedal for a tight, heavy tone. This track is played in drop B tuning (B F# B E G# C#), which means tuning all the strings down by three semitones from standard tuning, then the sixth string is tuned down an additional tone. A heavier gauge set of strings will help with your guitar’s setup. So, for example, if you usually use gauge 0.010s, we’d recommend trying out a set of 0.012s.…

The Vaccines frontman Justin Young puts it simply. “In some ways this is our most rock record.” He’s talking about Back In Love City, a high-tech set of songs that fuse futuristic keyboards and loops with retro rockabilly twang and punk rock powerchords. It was produced by Daniel Ledinsky, better known for collaborations with Tove Lo and Rihanna. But this is a guitar-driven album, shaped by Justin and the band’s lead player Freddie Cowan. “Eight or nine songs were built around lead guitar riffs,” Justin says. “Freddie was just sending me great riffs that inspired me to write over them.” The result is what Justin calls “a weird paradox of being more rock but also more pop”. And as Freddie explains, he had an unexpected source of inspiration for these…

It was titled simply Metallica, but it would forever be known as The Black Album. And after 30 years it stands tall as the band’s greatest success: one of the biggest selling albums of all time; a heavy metal classic that both defined and transcended the genre; an inspiration to guitar players across the decades. Released on August 12th 1991, The Black Album was a bold reinvention from the band that had revolutionised heavy music in the 1980s as progenitors of thrash metal. They had reached a tipping point in 1988 with ...And Justice For All, an album so dark and complex it seemed they could go no deeper. But with The Black Album, they found the way forward, and simplicity was the key. As rhythm guitarist/vocalist James Hetfield said:…

HowdidyoucometocoverTheStruggle WithinonTheMetallicaBlacklist? Honestly, we love The Black Album. Any tune would have been great. They requested that we do The Struggle Within. We are Metallica fans. In our starting period back in Mexico City we had a metal band and we used to play Anthrax, Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth, Testament, all those bands. We had that ingrained in us. I guess when you love something so much it comes easily to figure it out. Metallica have a lot of melodies and harmonies. It’s very musical, so it was easy to adapt. We started off doing the ballads like Welcome Home (Sanitarium). Progressively we started to put in all the rhythms and beats. The riffs sound heavy when you play them even though you’re using classical guitars. How do you do that?…

Wake Me Up When September Ends is a relatively simple song but there are a full 13 shapes to learn. The descending pattern that opens the verse should help you memorise a few, and the remainder are commonplace open and barre shapes. WAKE ME UP WHEN SEPTEMBER ENDS Words and Music by Billie Joe Armstrong, Frank E. Wright III and Michael Pritchard © 2004 WB Music Corp and Green Daze Music All Rights Administered by WB Music Corp Warner Chappell North America Ltd, London, W8 5DA Reproduced by permission of Faber Music Ltd and Alfred Publishing, LLC All Rights Reserved…

1 FENDER CORY WONG SIGNATURE STRATOCASTER This is looking like a very promising Strat indeed; the Sapphire Blue transparent nitro finish pays homage to the Vulfpeck member’s Highway One workhorse but offers a slightly thinner body than usual, and features a set of his Seymour Duncan Clean Machine single-coils. The Ultra series’ 10-14” fretboard radius features here with a push/pull pot on Tone 2 that bypasses the 5-way switch and defaults to position 4 – Wong’s favourite place. £2,249, www.fender.com 2 IK MULTIMEDIA AMPLITUBE X-GEAR PEDALS Hot on the heels of Universal Audio’s UAX effects, IK Multimedia is channeling its own acclaimed AmpliTube 5 modelling into guitar pedals with the aim to align it with a boutique hardware experience. The X-TIME delay, X-SPACE reverb, X-VIBE modulation and X-DRIVE distortion each…

When Croatian pedal specialists Dawner Prince initially designed their Boonar multi-head drum echo, based on the sound of the legendary Binson Echorec, there was really just one player they had in mind. And that was David Gilmour of Pink Floyd... “The Binson Echorec added that well-known mystic, cavernous, reverb-ish echo effect to Pink Floyd’s sound,” explains owner and CEO Zoran Kraljevic. “A lot of important parameters and small details help make the complete ‘picture’ – which is why the Echorec sounds so special – so I needed to carefully address them all and then find a way to emulate each into the design.” The pedal was first released in 2015. Fast-forward a year later and Kraljevic was watching David Gilmour live on stage making good use of the pedal he’d…

The company owned by Greek virtuoso Gus G, known for his work with Firewind and Ozzy Osbourne, now has two pickup sets available – the ceramic passive Immortals and the active Alnico 5 Proteus, which can be wired passive too. “I guess I started my own pickup company out of necessity,” Gus tells TG. “Obviously I wanted to continue down the active pickup path that I was known for, but I wanted to offer a passive set as well. Having a signature pickup can be limiting if you want more sounds, you’re kinda stuck with one model and that’s it. So I decided to go all in! Both are made for hard rock and metal primarily, but they’re quite different tonally.”…

Les Pauls What were you expecting, a finely-polished arch top? The concept of an Epiphone Slash Les Paul Standard shouldn’t come as a surprise, but if these are anything to go by, it should raise your eyebrows. J-45 If lighters were still raised skywards, we’d be striking our flint when one of these gets busted out. Slash’s take on the J-45 offers an electric-friendly, LR Baggs-equipped electro-acoustic. Seven finishes There are five Slash-related finishes across the range: four bursts and a goldtop. The J-45 is offered in the red Vermillion Burst or tobacco-style November Burst.…

1 ACOUSTIC INTRO TRACK 33 ST STEVE EVE SAYS SAYS This riff is effectively an amalgam of all the great Metallica ballads. I based it mainly on Welcome Home (Sanitarium)from Master Of Puppetsand Fade To Blackfrom Ride The Lightning, which both feature emotive minor arpeggios like this. 2 KTULU-ESQUE ARPEGGIOS ST STEVE EVE SAYS SAYS This riff was loosely based on the electric arpeggio ideas in two songs: The Call Of Ktulufrom Ride The Lightningand the middle section from Master Of Puppets. Both of these tracks hint at harmonic minor with the addition of the diminished 7th chord. I also borrowed the vibe and 12th fret harmonics from Nothing Else Matters(from the Black Album) and the diatonic chord movement from the intro to Fight Fire With Fire.…

ENTER SANDMAN BY GHOST Ghost’s take on Sandman seems to be “What would we have done if we’d written this song?” They boldly scrap the entire intro, instead performing the opening verse and chorus with just piano and vocal. They’ve reharmonised these sections, adding chords that appear nowhere in the original, so the melody takes on a new aspect. From verse two, the band kicks into a more faithful cover, but even then there are new chords in the pre-chorus. Whichever Nameless Ghoul delivered the guitar solo should take a bow, too, because we momentarily forgot Kirk Hammett’s altogether. BY JUANES While Mac DeMarco and Weezer offer largely by-the-numbers renditions of Enter Sandman, Colombia’s Juanes has a clever arrangement. SAD BUT TRUE His staccato, choppy approach sees him…

The P-90-style pickup is the sometimes-forgotten middle ground between single coil spike and prime beef of a humbucker, joining the likes of the minihumbucker as the ‘in-between’ tone. Once Seth Lover came up with his dual-coil design, it reigned supreme as the go-to pickup for electrics made by Gibson. This left the soapbar finding its home in Junior and Special models, at the same time cementing its place as a versatile magnet. One side of this split personality is a snarling, rowdy gobsh*te, prototyping punk with its association with garage rock. The other lends itself to clean and overdriven sounds beautifully too, making it a great choice as an all-rounder for clean to dirty rock sounds. Why the history lesson, and aren’t these Fenders? Take a look at the limited…

You probably recognise the pedal above. That’s because the distinctive black and orange visuals of a Boss compact pedal can mean only one thing: some of the most ferocious high-gain tones available. There have been a few iterations of gained-up pedals with this colour scheme over the years, but none more revered than the Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal. It’s the pedal that since its release has shaped the ‘chainsaw’ sound of Swedish death metal, largely thanks to its association with Entombed’s use of the pedal on Left Hand Path, released a year before the HM-2’s discontinuation. As many a gear icon, the HM-2 started out life as a relatively affordable filthmonger, before original Japanese versions started to rise in price on the used market, leading to ‘boutique’ clones and copies.…