Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 141 i Australian Guitar

JARED DINES AND MATT HEAFY TEAM UP FOR EP WORDS: MICHAEL ASTLEY-BROWN YouTube sensation Jared Dines has joined forces with Trivium main man Matt Heafy for the Dines x Heafy EP, which is available today on all streaming platforms. The five-track melodic metal EP sees Dines handle guitars, bass and drums in Washington, while Heafy tracked vocals and select guitar solos in Florida. Dines and Heafy first collaborated on Dines’ Shred Wars YouTube series back in 2017, which eventually led to Dines filling in for Heafy during Trivium’s 2018 tour. GRETA VAN FLEET ANNOUNCE ALBUM #2 Words: Michael Astley-Brown Grammy-winning classic-rockers Greta Van Fleet have confirmed a new album, The Battle At Garden’s Gate, set for release on April 16th, 2021. The Battle At Garden’s Gate is said to be…

MATT STEVENS + PAUL MUSOLINO HAILS FROM MELBOURNE, VIC PLAYS IN THE GLOOM IN THE CORNER SOUNDS LIKE MIND-MELTING MATHCORE CHAOS LATEST DROP ULTIMA PLUVIA (EP OUT NOW INDEPENDENTLY) What’s your current go-to guitar? Matt: I love my Fender Player Stratocaster HSS. I remember wanting a Stratocaster for a couple years, so one day I just walked into East Gate Music and played as many as I could. I also really liked a Japanese Stratocaster I played, but was astonished to find that the Player Series Stratocaster was a quarter of the price! It was a no-brainer for me to purchase that guitar – I love how the neck feels, along with the versatility or the humbucker and single-coil pickups. How did you initially fall in love with the instrument?…

POWDERFINGER Unreleased (1998-2010) UNIVERSAL Though dreams of a proper, full-fat comeback still aren’t likely to come true anytime soon, Powderfinger have finally sauntered back out into the spotlight – their first time as a full, well-oiled unit in ten viciously long years – holding in tow (as a follow-up to the instantly iconic One Night Lonely livestream) almost 40 minutes of previously unheard gold from across their 12-year stint as Australia’s most charismatically crushing rock titans. In more than a few ways, the simply titled Unreleased compilation may be more lucrative to longtime ‘Finger fans than any new set of tunes ever could be; here the band don’t have to emulate the good ol’ days, because, well, these are the good ol’ days – fully intact is the emphatically youthful…

Ask any metalcore diehard which bands are best serving the genre today, and they’ll almost certainly respond with… Well, from experience, a bunch of weird, niche acts their housemates’ cousins and such play in, who barely have a fanbase outside their hometown. But they’ll throw in some big names too – and one of those is virtually guaranteed to be Architects. Thanks to their eight universally adored albums and a touring regimen that’s seen them smash out approximately two bazillion shows in the past decade, the UK-native shredlords have built a community of fans as devoted as they are determined; if there’s just one thing that goes harder than the band’s tunes, it’s their mosh pits. With album number nine on the horizon, fears of the quintet running out of…

It’s often said that music is the one truly universal language – perhaps the only human creation capable of transcending literally any cultural or political barrier. For those of us lucky enough to have experienced live music in a land foreign to our own, such a claim is instantly agreeable – there’s no feeling quite as homely as standing arm in arm with a fellow metalhead in the middle of a mosh pit, even if you have clue at all what they’re saying to you in-between songs. For musicians themselves, too, it’s a powerful experience to explore the intrinsic cultural ties bound to various forms of music. Especially in the modern day, we’re seeing more and more artists fuse ethnically traditional tunes with contemporary genres; the most obvious example, for…

Not many of us can say we spent our formative years shredding out alongside such virtuosic legends as Steve Vai, Alice Cooper and Carlos Santana. Adelaidian rock queen Orianthi can, though – hell, her very first time on a stage outside the walls of her Anglican high school were with Mr. Vai, wailing out on her six-string as though she’d been doing it for decades (despite being just 15 years old herself). And in the 20 years since that faithful night, Orianthi’s hunger to kick down the barriers of the music industry and riff her way to the top has only intensified. On the outset, things may not look so hectic: she released her third solo album, Heaven In This Hell, in the early months of 2013, followed by a…

Angus Young is a rock ’n’ roll legend, but not a man to take himself too seriously. As he once said of his art: “You don’t go to the butcher for brain surgery.” Born on March 31st, 1955 in Glasgow, the youngest of eight children, Angus was just eight years old when his family emigrated to Australia, and it was in Sydney, in 1973, that he and his older brother Malcolm, rhythm guitarist, formed AC/DC. The band went on to sell more than 200 million albums worldwide, including 50 million of Back In Black. The death of Malcolm Young on November 18, 2017 left Angus as the last remaining founder member of AC/DC. But it was Malcolm’s wish that the band carried on, banging out loud, raw rock ’n’ roll,…

With the lack of live music and limited rehearsal opportunities right now, guitar players are stuck at home getting to grips with projects that have probably been put off for too long. For some that might be intonating a guitar or two – for others, it might mean finally getting that pedalboard in order. Whether you’re upgrading, expanding or simplifying, taking the time to get your ‘board functioning more optimally and reliably will pay dividends once the venues re-open their doors. Regardless of whether it’s your 50th or very first attempt, here are some essential tweaks and upgrades you should consider to take your pedalboard to the next level. Some of the options require a little financial outlay, while others here are completely free. Try one of them, or all…

Last year, IK Multimedia – maker of the AmpliTube amp and effects software – released the AXE I/O, a USB audio interface specifically designed for guitar players. The unique aspect of that unit is that rather than just having a bog-standard hi-Z (high impedance) input as provided for guitar use on many interfaces, it offers a range of options. You can set it for either active or passive pickups, choose optional JFET circuitry for the preamp and set the impedance to best suit your pickups using the variable Z-Tone knob. The AXE I/O has now spawned two smaller utility units – the Z-Tone Buffer Boost and Z-Tone DI – which may be ideal for guitarists who wish to take advantage of the enhanced gain-staging and tonal adjustment offered by those…

Though the company dates back to the mid-‘70s when it was mainly specialising in aluminium neck basses, it was a chance encounter between co-founder Dennis Berardi and Eddie Van Halen’s management on a flight in 1981 that led to the virtuoso teaming up with Kramer. It is rumoured that the guitarist promised to make them the biggest name in the trade – if he didn’t succeed, he certainly came close. The following decade led to some fruitful partnerships and a host of high-quality instruments renowned for uncompromising playability. By signing up the guitar players in bands like Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe and Whitesnake, in addition to Eddie’s endorsement for his first mass-produced signature, Kramer became the go-to brand for loud guitars with equally loud looks. It all came to an…

They may have the amp market stitched up but Vox isn’t the first name you think of when you ponder great guitar brands. This despite Vox guitars being used on some pretty damn iconic recordings over the years. The company taps into that legacy with its new Bobcat guitars, inspired by a pair of 1960s models (the Bobcat and Lynx) built for Vox by Italian company Eko. Each guitar is very reminiscent of their 20th-century inspirado but they come with playability and construction improvements. GETTING A SEMI The semi-acoustic Bobcat’s two variants – the S66 and the V90 – are essentially the same guitar, with the exception of the pickups and electronics. And the original guitars needed an update: early Bobcats were well known for their uncontrollable feedback, and the…

JOE BONAMASSA SHARES HIS GREATEST FINDS FROM A LIFETIME OF BUYING AND SELLING GUITARS Words: David Mead Every guitar player who turns up for a Bought & Sold interview has got a few stories to tell and wisdom to share, but none are as well positioned as Mr. Joe Bonamassa to talk about the buying and selling of electric guitars and amplifiers. The blues master and proprietor of Nerdville has one of the coolest guitar collections on the planet. It’s not just the numbers – which are impressive – it is his focus. He knows what he likes, and that, folks, is one of the key takeaways from this one. With his new album, Royal Tea, out on record store shelves virtual and physical, Bonamassa recants some of his gear…

FENDER TASH SULTANA STRATOCASTER RRP: $1,999 • fender.com Finished in vibrant Transparent Cherry and furnished with all-gold hardware, the Tash Sultana Stratocaster has good looks to match its upscale appointments. The clarity and sparkle of Yosemite single-coil Strat pickups, combined with the powerful Double Tap humbucking bridge pickup, deliver a wide range of tonal options at your fingertips. The Modern C-shape maple neck, with 9.5-inch radius, and 22 medium jumbo frets provides comfortable modern playability, while the vintage-style synchronised tremolo offers classic Strat vibrato action. Other features include a matching painted headstock and custom “skull” neck plate. EPIPHONE “INSPIRED BY GIBSON” ES-335 RRP: $1,499+ australismusic.com.au Here stands Epiphone’s version of the historic ES-335, which has been wowing guitar players all over the world for over six decades. From its inaugural…

Despite being one of the most heavily streamed artists of all time (his 2012 hit “Let Her Go” racking up over a billion plays of its own), with tens of millions of albums sold and more arenas packed with diehard fans than you could fit typed out on this whole page, Passenger (or to his mates and mum, Mike Rosenberg) is almost scarily down-to-earth. He answers our Zoom call from his lowkey Brighton living room, dressed in favourite footy team’s jersey and sipping gently on a cup of tea, winding down from a long day of waxing lyrical about his 13th album. As implied by the title Songs For The Drunk And Brokenhearted, the record is distinctly deep and melancholic, its narratively focussed ten tracks being written at a particularly…

At face value, Jess Locke’s music may seem rather cozy and quaint. But just as the Melbourne-native strummer is typically mellow and reserved until you get to know her (at which point she erupts into a luminous blur of liveliness and laughter), her art is secretly rich with polychromatic poignancy, shades of light and dark, sugar and acid twisting and twining around soundscapes far more intricate than they imply – you just need to pay a little closer attention to scratch beneath the initial coat of indie-pop tweeness. Since the 2017 release of her sophomore solo effort Universe, Locke has only dug her heels deeper into the world of louder and more chaotic rock ’n’ roll aesthetics: she joined The Smith Street Band, first in their touring pack as a…

For pop-rock titans You Me At Six, the road to Suckapunch has been long and winding, fraught with potholes and speed-bumps aplenty. But now, on the cusp of the album’s hotly anticipated release (after a handful of COVID-related delays, of course), rhythm guitarist Max Helyer looks back on it all with a sigh of relief and a slight chuckle. It took him and his bandmates almost two decades to reach the level they’re at – the level they’ve always strived to reach, but never quite knew how to climb – and now that they’ve finally made it, there’s nothing but good vibes. Helyer describes Suckapunch as the definitive You Me At Six album, and such is certainly palpable when listening to it – from the glittery and lowkey “What’s It…

Though he’s best known as one of the most revolutionary string-splitters in prog-rock history (thanks in no short part to his tenure fronting Porcupine Tree), Steven Wilson has his headstocks dipped deep in a myriad of genre-disparate pots. Take for example his sixth solo album – The Future Bites, hot off the presses via Universal – which blends with Wilson’s signature serpentine fretwork an array of glitchy and glittery synths, keyboard solos and dance beats. In many ways, The Future Bites is a highly conceptual effort. Sonically, it explores a realm of contemporary pop music sometimes minimalist, and sometimes absolutely bursting at the seams with captivatingly convoluted disarray. Thematically, it explores how technology has both benefitted and hindered the progression of modern society – it invites us on a critical…

Don’t let their mercilessly over-the-top, crusty goth-punk shell steer you off – Pale Waves are all about spreading good vibes, bold and buoyant pop-rock jams and memories that’ll last a lifetime. Like their mentors, the fellow Dirty Hit upstarts and binary-bending deviants in The 1975, the aesthetic-heavy quartet first chiselled out a passionate UK following – and now, on the cusp of releasing their second album, are ready to make one hell of a splash on the international scene. That album in question is the aptly experiential Who Am I? – a piercingly peppery set of chords, keys and quips that’ll stick to your brain like gum in freshly washed hair. The band declare Who Am I? to stand as the official Pale Waves manifesto, “inspiring inclusivity, self-discovery, and the…

In an age of fractured attention spans and a ghastly over-reliance on nostalgia porn, The Smashing Pumpkins dare to be defiant with their unapologetically erratic and experimental new album: the 72-minute long, synthpop-inspired Cyr. Its 20 tracks are bold and brooding and just the right tinge of buoyant – simplistic at first glance but structured like the perfect French pastry with layer upon layer of deep and dense artistic flair when you dig just a little deeper. Fans of the Pumpkins’ ripping and raging grunge-rock anthems will almost certainly turn their noses up at Cyr – but Billy Corgan doesn’t give a shit. When we caught up with the 53-year-old father, musical multi-hyphenate and pro wrestling obsessive, one thing became immediately clear: though he’s still emphatically outspoken, Corgan’s appetite to…

Robert Johnson, Son House, Lead Belly, Memphis Minnie, Charley Patton, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf… History has a way of deifying names such as these, ensuring that they’re spoken about in awed, reverent tones because of their innovative musical inspiration. In one respect, this reverence is completely justified. These blues guitarists are among the founders of rock ’n’ roll, and of popular music as a whole. Without them there would be no Chuck Berry, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Duane Allman, Samantha Fish or Gary Clark Jr, to name a few of the guitarists influenced by their music. And so they are revered, not only for their music, guitar talents or songwriting abilities, but also for the hard lives they led, which were more often than not…

Australia’s indie-rock scene has never shone so brightly – with artists like Didirri, Timberwolf, Lilac Cove and Oh Deliah constantly making waves with their bewitching beats and heart-melting hooks, it’s undeniable that now is the best time to be a fan of all things vibey. One thing all four of those artists have in common? They’ve all had their visions brought to life by Kiah Gossner, a multiaward winning producer, engineer, mixer, songwriter, bassist, conductor… The Adelaidian maestro basically does everything – and he does it all pretty damn well, if we may say so ourselves. Splitting his time between Mixmasters Studio in Adelaide and Studios 301 in Sydney, Gossner is fast becoming one of the most sought-after names in Australian music. So before his schedule becomes truly chaotic with…

With the introduction of its TH-U software, Overloud has delivered a product that rivals the most sophisticated (and expensive) hardware units available today. In addition to providing a vast selection of guitar rigs comprising the most-coveted classic, modern boutique and obscure cult amps, a wide variety of speaker cabinet options and a comprehensive selection of effects, TH-U provides powerful modification capabilities that include the ability to swap preamp and power tubes and adjust voltage with a virtual Variac. With the addition of the new Rig Player feature, which reproduces rig models profiled from real-world setups, TH-U is one of the most powerful amp/ effects modelling software packages available today. While TH-U is available in genre-specific Metal, Rock and Funk/R&B packages that each contain 16 amps, 15 speaker cabs and 16…

Zoom was one of the pioneers of the floorboard multi-effects processor, but it’s been several years since the company released a new one. Now, building on what the previous G5n offered, it’s back with this brand-new G11, which is certainly feature-packed. It comes equipped with an intuitive touchscreen display, two banks of footswitches and a pedal treadle. It has a stereo or dual mono effects loop for adding external pedals or for four-cable connection, and an input for an expression pedal. A USB connection allows operation as four-in/four-out 24-bit audio interface as well as providing access to computer-based editing via the free Zoom Guitar Lab software, also accessible with an iOS/iPadOS device by connecting a Zoom BTA-1 wireless adaptor. A looper that records up to five minutes in stereo can…

You’ve decided to learn the guitar. Congratulations! You’ve taken the first step on a journey that will provide you a lifetime of enjoyment. Providing you stick to it, that is. Which you should! When you start anything new, be that a hobby or a job, there are bound to be questions you’ll have about how things will pan out, and what you can expect. Here we’ll pool together some thoughts we’ve had, and outline some of the things you can expect when you start learning the guitar. 1. PROGRESS WILL BE SLOW Unless you’re some kind of prodigious talent, the chances are that progress will be – at the start, at least – painfully slow. Painful being the operative word. More on that later. Put simply, there is no easy…

SIOBHAN COTCHIN SHE IS the future queen of Australian country, fresh out of WA with ambitions high and guitar gripped tightly. At age 20, she sings like she’s lived a generation, raw and rootsy and nothing short of riveting. SHE SOUNDS LIKE the heart and soul of country’s greatest spun through a distinctly modern web. Her playing is bold and tight and feels emphatically impassioned, and there’s genuine, palpable emotion in every line she roars into the mic. The rawness of her lead tone is subdued by crisp, contemporary production – and that isn’t at all to its detriment; instead, it posits Siobhan as a choice to pioneer the future of Australian country. YOU’LL DIG HER IF YOU LIKE Kacey Musgraves, Lucinda Williams and Bruce Springsteen – ideally blast from…

BILLIE JOE ARMSTRONG No Fun Mondays REPRISE / WARNER It’s rare for an album of covers to rival any great artist’s own work. But the effort Billie Joe Armstrong put into his 2020 lockdown project can’t be understated. No matter how disparate the source material, Armstrong ties each track together with his big, soaring singalong voice and loveably gritty fretwork. You can hear how much fun he had dipping into his new-wave edge on “Kids In America”; when he hits the chorus on “Corpus Christi”, you can tell how strongly he envisioned howling it out to a jam-packed stadium. Perhaps most importantly, though, Armstrong doesn’t merely emulate his heroes on this tirelessly spirited love letter to them – he makes each song entirely his own, keeping the integrity of each…

Few bands have done as much to revolutionise the heavy music landscape as Bring Me The Horizon. The little Sheffield shredders that could have come a long way since the summery days of ’06, when they’d fill basements to the brim with mosh-hungry maniacs keen to get their teeth elbowed in to a soundtrack of garish, ghastly deathcore. They now reign with a frenzied fusion of post-rock riffs and underground electro beats, their sixth (and supposedly final) album Amo bringing them to an artistic peak most other genre-bending creatives could only dream of. Since eschewing the traditional album campaign in favour of loose, off-the-cuff single and EP releases, Bring Me The Horizon have truly embraced their freedom in the music industry: their fans range from bonafide steel-crunching metalheads to dancefloor…

The last time Australian Guitar caught up with Luca Brasi was in the winter of 2018, as the Tassie pub-rockers were gearing up to release their career-defining fourth album, Stay. To call it a monumental release would be an understatement: after the cracking the mainstream with their 2016 record, If This Is All We’re Going To Be, all eyes were planted firmly on the foursome, desperate to see how they’d one-up themselves with a narrativeheavy epic co-produced with Aussie punk legend Darren Cordeaux (ex-Kisschasy). Understandably, the boys were nervous – but there was more to it than that. Behind the scenes, Luca Brasi was struggling, and hard. They’d suddenly catapulted from local dive bars to capital city theatres, and were copping more media attention per week than they typically would…

With her road-worn, off-white Tele in hand and her scratchy, sugar-sweetened ruminations on millennial angst, broken love and stormy inner crises, Julien Baker makes a theatre full of twenty-somethings feel like one incredibly gigantic, overly sweaty family reunion. It beggars belief how such simple indie-rock songs can burst through the barriers of emotional reclusivity; no matter how deep your feelings are buried, Julien wields the power to unearth them with no more than three chords and a sharp hook. And, like she does her own over three earnest and urgent studio albums, she encourages you to embrace those feelings. The latest of her studio output is Little Oblivions: an album that builds on Baker’s typically sparse and subdued soundscapes with a headphone-filling avalanche of luscious full-band instrumentation, daring thematic bombshells,…

Since the days when they’d stream bedroom-set jam sessions on YouTube, we a Australian Guitar have spouted nothing but love for Tash Sultana. But it’d be a lie to imply their chaotic energy was any shade of easy to work with: mania defines the multi-instrumentalist, hectic schedules, last-minute plot twists and spontaneous hops to foreign lands all the norm for an artist whose life moves at about 35 times the speed of the average human’s. Do they even sleep? (We’ve asked that, half-jokingly: the answer is “some nights”). Scoring the rare interview with Sultana means being extra flexible, since they almost always call early and refuse to wait around – and being especially choosy with questions, since they don’t have the time to f*** around with any small-talk. At least,…

If all went according to plan, now would be around the time Plini finished up his first trek touring the world in support of his second full-length effort, Impulse Voices. Instead, the Sydney-based prog lord is gearing up for his first stint back on stages since a curtailed US run in February 2020. Fingers crossed, that is, granted no more COVID-related hiccups force him to postpone. The original goal to was to have LP2 hit shelves in the first half of last year. But when the world hit pause and Plini’s future suddenly became anything but certain, he decided not to sweat the deadlines – in fact, most of what ended up making the cut for Impulse Voices came together well after its projected release date. The 28-year-old embraced the…

Like all of us, Angus Young has been spending a lot of time at home lately. “It’s a bit different,” the 65-year-old AC/ DC guitarist admits about life in the time of quarantining and social distancing. Although in some ways, he adds, not so much. “I guess I’m used to being tucked away somewhere in a room and just putting together ideas and songs,” he says with a laugh. As it turns out, Young has indeed spent a fair amount of time these last few years “tucked away somewhere in a room and putting together ideas and songs.” Which is how we’ve wound up, rather unexpectedly but certainly quite happily, with Power Up, AC/DC’s 16th (or, if we’re counting in Australian, 17th) full-length effort. As for what makes it unexpected?…

What connects Paul Simon, Carlos Santana and Milton Nascimento? Answer: they all own guitars made by the same pair of hands. Well into her fifth decade building guitars, Linda Manzer is one of the most esteemed luthiers of modern times. A pioneer and inspiration to generations of other guitar makers, she creates instruments that command ardent fans, decent money and the occasional museum plinth. Convention-defying flat-tops, archtops, sopranos, baritones, sitar guitars and jaw-dropping one-offs such as the 42-string Pikasso for Pat Metheny – Manzer’s oeuvre and impact are all the more remarkable when you consider she’s done what she’s done in a business that might at times appear to have operated a ‘no girls’ rule. So, what makes Manzer – and other luthiers who chose to ignore that rule –…

Some sessions require me to be a mind reader. I am often asked to improvise a solo or fills in a song. Various types of directions are usually given: “Play like Joe Walsh or Brent Mason,” or, “Make it melodic.” Sometimes the directions are more vague: “Make it sound orange,” or, ”Keep it organic.” I’m not a mind reader, so it’s important for me to be able to not only be flexible but to have an endless amount of creativity. It’s not unusual for me to give clients several solos from which to choose. I know we all have our stock licks in our vocabulary, and I like to believe these make up our style. However, I don’t want to be a one-trick pony, so I have a cool way…

The phenomenal growth of podcasting has largely gone under the radar. Yet recent news that music-streaming platform Spotify has signed Joe Rogan, the comedian, MMA commentator and podcaster, to an exclusive deal which – depending on which figures you read – makes him the highest paid broadcaster in the world. This shows that podcasting is now a very serious business. You’re probably familiar with podcasting already, but do you know how to start a podcast? The oft-used line is that it takes ten years to become an overnight success. Thankfully, the relative simplicity of creating podcasts means with the right ideas, techniques and gear, anybody can do it. In this guide we’ll show you the steps to take, and offer some advice on how to start a podcast for yourself.…

These recently announced amps are hot off the presses and fresh off the factory floor, right in rim for the post-Christmas shopping season. In a slick promo video a Fender rep says that they spoke with real acoustic guitarists and asked them what their ideal amplifier would be. In response to the feedback, the company has delivered three models that are stylishly presented, heavy on digital processing and mixing capability and pretty damn light to boot. Spoiler warning: these are good amps that deserve a serious look from the guitar community’s strummers and pluckers. Let’s investigate why. The two amps in question are two-thirds of the full product line. The Acoustic Junior GO is the same as the Acoustic Junior we have here, but it is a little heavier due…

DV Mark has a reputation for punchy, fully-tricked out heads and combos that serve a player’s creative needs no matter what those needs might entail. The range has at times been extensive, with a model for just about any situation imaginable. So it’s interesting to look at their website and see that these options have been pared back to just seven electric guitar combos and none of them have a confusing battery of knobs and switches. I guess the folks at DV Mark have recognised (before many others) that the whole “pedal thing” has returned with a vengeance, and doesn’t look like easing up any time soon, and their 50-watt Raw Dawg is a superb platform for our favourite gadgets. The Raw Dawg 60 is Eric Gales signature combo, and…