Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 153 i Australian Guitar

BABY COOL So, where are you from? I grew up in a small town in north-west New South Wales called Narrabri. In 2001, The Today Show crowned Narrabri ‘Australia’s Sportiest Town’. I was the ripe old age of nine and remember feeling really proud, despite having no sporting ability. What’s your latest drop? In February I released my debut album, Earthling On The Road To Self Love. It’s a collection of very sentimental songs that I felt ready to share with the rest of the world. It’s a calming record of sorts, so I guess if you’re doing something stressful, you should cut that out and sit by the water and listen to this instead. How would you sell your sound? If you suddenly have the urge to sway, dance,…

AXES IN ACTION WHERE QUDOS BANK ARENA, EORA/SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES WHEN SUNDAY MARCH 19TH, 2023 Excluding a one-off festival set in their stomping grounds of New Jersey, the last shows My Chemical Romance played before breaking up - the first time, obviously - were in Australia. Just over a year after their careerdefining sets at the 2012 Big Day Out (RIP), the iconoclastic emo stars officially disbanded on March 22, 2013. Their long-prophesied reunion came in 2019, with the first proper leg of their comeback tour serendipitously booked for Australia the following March - but of course the plague made a gory mess of our dreams just a week out from MCR’s touchdown, and as fate would have it, we were now due to host the last headline shows…

AXES IN ACTION WHERE 170 RUSSELL, NAARM/MELBOURNE, VICTORIA WHEN FRIDAY MARCH 10TH, 2023 Cutting their teeth on gruff, angsty metalcore in PCYCs and pubs around Eora/Sydney - then the rest of the country, then (inevitably) the world - Polaris fast rose to their hard-earned stature as one of the most exciting bands in the scene; especially impressive since their first release came in 2013 (the rough-and-tumble Dichotomy EP, which hasn’t aged too horribly), when the second wave of metalcore was in the stages of fizzling out. So to celebrate their first decade of musical destruction, Polaris took to some (relatively) intimate theatres, a lineup of their closest local mates in tow, for a soul-splitting drag race down memory lane. Up first were the Berrin/Mount Gambier-rative Pridelards, whose transcendent blasts of…

AXES IN ACTION WHERE CORNER HOTEL, NAARM/MELBOURNE, VICTORIA WHEN SUNDAY MARCH 12TH, 2023 Serious question: what wave are we up to in emo? Fourth? Fifth? Whatever the case, Mom Jeans were keen as cookie dough to make Naarm/ Melbourne feel all the feels, chant and the chants and mosh all the moshes. But in the spirit of emo’s brass-bound community roots, we’d first hear from a local act: the fast-rising queen of the scene’s Australian chapter, Suzi. It’s without a doubt she’ll be filling rooms like the Corner (if not those thrice its size) within a year or two - galvanised by the captivating chemistry and applaudable tightness of her backing band (guitarist Nick Keogh a force to be reckoned with on his own merits), Suzannah Yaghmoor tore through her…

INTERVIEW It’s kind of wild to think that just last year, Frenzal Rhomb celebrated 30 years of punk-rocking revelry - not quite as boisterous as they were in their late-‘90s heyday, but certainly much more talented… I guess everything levels out exactly how it’s supposed to! Back when they were objectively quite shit, the Sydney crew were pumping out the tunes with impressive speed: one album each from 1995 to ’97 (Coughing Up A Storm, Not So Tough Now and Meet The Family, respectively), then after a single year off, back-to-back drops in '99 and 2000 (A Man's Not A Camel and Shut Your Mouth). The start of that sentence shouldn’t be read as an insult backhanded as it might be - because Frenzal’s two biggest drawcards in their halcyon…

INTERVIEW After reaching the peak of their natural progression from electronicore warriors to synthpop stalwarts (which came with their 2017 album The Spark), Enter Shikari went back to square one for 2020’s Everything Is True & Nothing Is Possible. Not only did that record serve as a wicked return to form - where The Spark and its predecessor (2015’s The Mindsweep) saw Shikari lean a bit on the safer side, Everything Is True revitalised their classic penchant for radical experimentation - but it felt like a love letter to the band’s two-decade tenure up to that point. It had the grit of Take To The Skies (2007), the forceful intent of Common Dreads (2009) and the mulish exaltation of A Flash Flood Of Colour (2012), rounded out with the ambitiousness…

INTERVIEW For nothing, nowhere, (aka Joseph Mulherin), it only made sense that his just-released fifth album, Void Eternal, would see him leap boldly into the unknown. His schtick has long been this entrancing blend of trap and post-hardcore (he was a big player in the “emo rap” boom of the mid-2010s and indeed cut his teeth on SoundCloud, but he stood out musically from its other heavyweights) but this time around, he leans into more aggressive, in-yourface territory: the moody rock riffs are subbed out for thick, guttural breakdowns, laden with screams steeped in raw human emotion; the rapped bars are reserved for Mulherin’s most bloodthirsty barbs. Void Eternal is heavily inspired by the nu-metal greats of ‘90s and ‘00s - “I want to be what bands like Linkin Park…

VOX BRYAN MAY AMPLUG & MV50 RRP: $109.99 - $499.99 • au.yamaha.com Sir Brian May and Vox have joined forces to make the legendary guitarist’s iconic tone accessible to all. Two new products - the MV50 Brian May, and amPlug Brian May - are the result of the collaboration. With the amPlug Brian May guitar headphone amplifier, you can get the legendary guitarist’s classic tone anytime, anywhere - through any set of standard headphones. Powered by Vox’s Nutube technology - a revolutionary new vacuum tube that produces authentic tube tone at a fraction of the size and power - the MV50 Brian May is based on the MV50 circuitry and AC30 tone, but with the addition of a KAT (Knight Audio Technologies) treble booster, which can be toggled on or…

We recently reviewed the MB58R head with a stand-alone cab. At the time, we wondered 1) how long it would be until we saw a combo version and 2) how would it stack up (no pun intended) with the separate components we had in front of us at that time. Point 2 is a legitimate question because, when they shoehorn an amp head into an enclosure to create a combo, the cab’s internal cubic volume changes and, even if they’ve allowed for this volume differential, the internal geography is altered compared to a (theoretically) empty box. So, with that in mind, we set up this Markbass combo in exactly the same position in the same room, using the same test instruments (a Fender PJ-style bass with a maple fretboard and…

ANNA LIENHOP NAARM/MELBOURNE, VICTORIA PLAY IN MOODY BEACHES SOUNDS LIKE HEADY AND CHARGED PUNKGAZE LATEST DROP ACID OCEAN (LP OUT NOW VIA POISON CITY) How did you first discover the guitar? My first guitar was a secondhand three-quarter nylon-string that was purchased for my music class in primary school. I couldn’t tell you what it was, but I can tell you it probably wasn’t ever in tune. I think I fell in love with the guitar when I was able to write a whole song with two chords after my first lesson. What’s your current go-to? It’s a black DeArmond Guild M-75 that I got off eBay for maybe $500. It was in storage when I fell out of love with playing guitar, but I eventually picked it up again…

WHERE 170 RUSSELL, NAARM/MELBOURNE, VICTORIA WHEN WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 1ST, 2023 From the second Marie Ulven (better known as Girl In Red) raced out onstage with her band of equally maniacal misfits, 170 Russell was a heaving riot of adolescent stamina and sapphic thirst. It helped that Ulven and co. kicked their set off with ‘You Stupid Bitch’, the fiercest and most explosive cut from her debut album, 2021’s If I Could Make It Go Quiet. With a long night ahead, Ulven immediately dropped the mood to something more laidback, flipping to the opposite end of her sonic spectrum with the silky, R&B-influenced ‘Body And Mind’. From there, the set’s energy undulated beautifully across the hour, rising gently with the saccharine bliss of queer anthem ‘Girls’ and the wistful slow-burn of…

WHERE MAX WATT’S. NAARM/MELBOOURNE, VICTORIA WHEN THURSDAY MARCH 23RD, 2023 For their first-ever trip across the pond, Pale Waves brought a set meticulously crafted for maximum impact: the chill moments, while present, were few and far between, serving only as brief glimmers of respite amid the otherwise ruinous eruption of pop-punk pluckiness. Lighting the fuse for the British quintet were their Kauna/Adelaide-native contemporaries in Teenage Joans, who themselves are on the cusp of filling theatres out. Sure to take them there is their forthcoming debut album (due out at the end of the year), from which they previewed a healthy handful of tunes. From what we gathered. ‘Hospital Bed’ will be a thrashy and colourful, blink-and-miss-it slap of Yungblud-inspired punk-pop, while 'Superglue’ will fit more in line with the heady…

AXES IN ACTION WHERE THE FORUM, NAARM/MELBOURNE, VICTORIA WHEN SATURDAY FEBRUARY 25TH, 2023 Australia loves Alexisonfire: the post-hardcore powerhouse toured here eight times between 2004 and 2017, each subsequent visit presenting a band that’s ever-so-slightly evolved - tighter in their performance but still staunchly determined to wreak absolute havoc. The gap between their last stint and this one spanned six years, which is longer than it took them to return between their farewell tour and comeback run (2012 and ’17, respectfully). That may have been the fault of a global pandemic, but the band haven’t just unpaused from where they were before it - when they take to the stage at The Forum, they do as a unit that’s spent the past six years continuing to evolve. Equally sharing the…

INTERVIEW The last time Australian Guitar met with RVG frontwoman Romy Vager, she was feeling rather feral. “I just feel like a wild animal,” she told us at the time - January 2020, just a few weeks before the world as we knew it would cave in on itself in a chasm of plague-induced insanity. It was a fertile time for RVG the Melbourne indie-rockers on the precipice of their hard-earned mainstream breakthrough - with their aptly titled second album Feral making landfall that April. Punky and incitive at its core, Feral still had an impact - but the lack of touring opportunities meant Vager and co. couldn’t give it the life it deserved. You’d think this would make the singer-songwriter even more pissed off; realistically, RVG’s third album should…

INTERVIEW The blood red aesthetics of Waterparks’ longawaited fifth album, Intellectual Property, are entirely fitting: the Texan pop-rockers have always beer loud and showy and a little off-the-rails, but here they’re downright vicious. It’s their shortest album (by a whole two minutes) but it’s easily their most diverse; plot-twists are aplenty, with necksnapping shifts from saccharine pop to scorching rock, all tied together with Awsten Knight’s sharpest quips and stickiest hooks. As the singer, multi-instrumentalist, producer and creative genius tells Australian Guitar, this record is Waterparks’ most ambitious because it needed to be. Their last disc, 2021’s Greatest Hits, was a gamutspanning epic that burrowed into and made a home out of every sound they’d ever played with - which, given the band’s total rejection of genre, meant it was…

HOW TO FIVE WAYS TO… Not just the open tuning that’s most fun to say, DADGAD is also one of the most versatile guitar tunings. When you strum the open strings it produces a Dsus4 chord which, being neither major nor minor, has the potential to create a world of different moods. Jimmy Page exploited it in Kashmir, BlackMountain Side and White Summer, inspired by the folk guitarists Davy Graham and Bert Jansch, who popularised the tuning. Although best known as a folk tuning, DADGAD has a world of applications. It crops up in All Time Low’s 2008 pop-punk classic Dear Maria, Count Me In, and 80s rockers Tesla used it for the hard-driving riffs of Heaven’s Trail (No Way Out). Slipknot, Ed Sheeran, and Johnny Cash have all used it,…

AUSTRALIAN recording TECHNIQUE RECORDING For most guitarists, sticking a trusty SM57 in front of a speaker cabinet is the go-to for amp recording, but it’s fair to say confining yourself to just that method can leave your recordings feeling a little sterile. However, there are some really simple solutions to make your guitar recordings explode. Some of the very best ways to add excitement, dynamism and girth to your tone is to introduce an extra microphone or two - and not just in front of the speaker cone. With amp emulation and impulse responses at many players’ fingertips, it’s tempting to simply do all your work in the box, but whilst the technology is getting better and better, nothing beats the real thing. With endless adjustability, both minuscule and massive,…

REVIEW For aspiring purveyors who relish in sonic mayhem, EarthQuaker Devices has been on a collaborative roll, releasing limited-edition stompboxes that straddle the line between distortion pedal and fuzz while sprinkling in a healthy dose of aural chaos for good measure. From their joint effort with Death By Audio to unleash the Time Shadows pedal, to partnering with Boris guitarist Wata for the Hizumitas, EOD is at a creative peak in the dark arts of crushing saturated ecstasy. Their latest offering is the third iteration (V3) of their collaboration with drone metal doomsayers Sunn 0))) for the EarthGuaker Devices Sunn 0))) Life Pedal V3 - a triple threat of a stompbox that combines massive distortion, octave fuzz, clean boost and much more. The previous limited-run versions have all sold out,…

EverTune has announced the long-awaited arrival of the Bass Bridge, which will bring its innovative stable-tuning hardware to four-strings and enable bassists to stay in tune indefinitely. It is hard to believe that it’s been over ten years since the company first unveiled its astonishing EverTune guitar bridge - a spring-loaded unit that compensates for movement in the strings - which ensures that, once set, the instrument never goes out of tune. Now bassists are set to get the same treatment with the EverTune Bass Bridge. The company first made the announcement in mid-April. “The EverTune bass bridge features an elegant design with a small footprint that requires very little routing, and it will transform your bass into a truly state-of-the-art machine,” said EverTune’s Matt Blackett. “As with every EverTune…

AXES IN ACTION WHERE CENTENNIAL PARK, EORA/SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES WHEN SATURDAY MARCH 25TH, 2023 It’s a brave and uncertain thing to start a new heavy music festival in post-COVID Australia. But if there is one thing Slipknot has always been, it’s ambitious. And by God they pulled it off, with all three legs of Knotfest Australia being complete sell-outs. Centennial Park has long proved itself to be a great locale for festivals, although as is the case with most venues of its ilk, more shading here is badly needed. We felt thankful that Sydney lucked out with a mostly overcast day (a rare occurrence indeed). Celebrating music, art, and culture, Knotfest had a lot on offer, all packed into a very tight timeframe. With only 14 bands on the…

AXES IN ACTION WHERE NORTHCOTE THEATRE, NAARM/MELBOURNE, VICTORIA WHEN THURSDAY FEBRUARY 23RD, 2023 It’s stately and squeezes in a mighty 1,500 - impressive as hell for any single-album artist on their first Australian tour - but for Dodie, the Northcote Theatre feels distinctly intimate. They grace the stage with a saccharine warmth and poise that promptly sets the mood: wholesome and lowkey, celebrating a shared sense of parasocial connection and sapphic yearning. The English indie-folkster cut their teeth on YouTube over the 2010s, fostering a fanbase of mostly young, queer women and non-binary folk that value earnestness and authenticity - and they’re in full force tonight, laughing along with every one of Dorothy Clark’s twee anecdotes and almost drowning them out entirely with their rapturous karaoke. The vibe here is…

WHERE MARVEL STADIUM, NAARM/MELBOURNE, VICTORIA WHEN FRIDAY FEBRUARY 24TH, 2023 The mood inside Marvel Stadium is one of pure, inescapable euphoria: Harry Styles’ fans are nothing if not devoted (sometimes concerningly so), and with this marking his first tour Down Under in five years, those fans are veritably bursting at the seams with excitement. Rarely do we see a face that’s not plastered with a big, animated smile - kids and adults alike - and there are quite a few of them here tonight; it takes us eight whole minutes to walk from the start of the line to the back (we timed it). To combat the lengthy queues, particularly devoted fans started lining up yesterday. Psychopath behaviour. With all this youthful excitement around Styles’ return, Wet Leg’s opening set…

INTERVIEW There’s no other artist quite like Alex Lahey. At once bubbly and boisterous, she rounds out her palette of prickly indie-pop flavours with a uniquely punchy, tinnie-swinging larrikin spirit. Rarely does the Naarm/Melbourne native take herself too seriously, with songs often (gently) self-deprecating and almost always steered by her staunch keenness to have fun with her music. Nowhere clearer is this than on her crash-hot third album, The Answer Is Always Kes, where she riffs on the trials and tribulations of being a queer stoner in your mid-twenties, stumbling up the staircase that modern life in Australia. But while it is a quintessential Alex Lahey album, The Answer Is Always Yes feels distinctly cultured: it’s more daring and explorative in its sound, mixing fleshed out by layers of contrast…

Everything you need to know before playing R U Mine? Alex Turner is regularly seen wielding a Gretsch 6128T Duo Jet for live performances of this track. During the AMTrecording sessions, he used a Coopersonic Dual Valve Distortion pedal with Selmer and Magnatone combo amps, sometimes mic’d together. Factoring in Jamie Cook’s accompanying guitar part, it’ll be hard to recreate the exact blend of sounds, so we recommend starting with a basic clean tone such as a Fender Twin (another of Alex’s favourites) and experiment with the fuzz pedals and amps in your collection/digital modeller to get closer.…

INTERVIEW AUSTRALIAN recording TECHNIQUE When the group disbanded in 1970, Ken briefly worked with George Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr, before heading off to assist such legends as David Bowie, Elton John, Mahavishnu Orchestra and Jeff Beck. He recently embarked on a project to film The History Of The Beatles Recording Techniques. Working alongside Fab Dupont, producer and coowner of plugin designer and provider of recording technique tutorials Puremix, it would be a mammoth task. “Fab and I were talking about how the recording techniques that The Beatles used changed everything,” begins Ken. “So we split it into four sections: the Please Please Me era, the Drive My Car era, The White Album era, and the Abbey Road era. “We went into Abbey Road Studio Two, the main one…

REVIEW With considerable experience in both retail and guitar craft, not to mention teching for numerous touring pro musicians, Seth Baccus - the step son of guitar-making legend Andy Manson - has built a considerable reputation for his Nautilus set-neck and Shoreline bolt-on custom builds. But as Seth’s reputation escalated so did the demand, and before long he was turning down orders. But salvation came from the newly formed York-based UK Guitar Builders (UKGB), and the electric guitar we have here is one of the first off the small production line. To be honest, when we first heard about this collaboration, we expected to see a more costeffective version of the bespoke Shoreline (there are no plans at the moment to produce the Nautilus). This guitar is anything but. Like…

REVIEW Lightweight bass combos have become a popular choice in recent years, as more and more of us abandon large and loud amplification in favor of smaller units and in-ear monitoring. Our lower backs and wallets love us for this, but then again, we miss the big sounds of the big boxes. Never fear: this Bass Cub II combo from the great Phil Jones Bass fits into the ‘small but perfectly formed’ category, incorporating two independent channels of controls and giving us plenty of settings to play with. Let’s plug and play. Our first impressions are that this is a wellbuilt and sensibly laid-out combo. The controls are recessed into the top panel, to avoid being inadvertently knocked or damaged; it features a black or red vinyl covering; and metal…

FINAL NOTE It was late in 1982 when Jake E. Lee tendered his resignation from the band Ratt after snagging the plum guitar spot with Ozzy Osborne. Rather than leave his ex-bandmates high and dry, he brought in his pal Warren DeMartini as his replacement. DeMartini, all of 19 at the time, drove from San Diego to Los Angeles with little more than a guitar, an amp and a cheap tape deck on which he had recorded a few rough song ideas he was messing around with. "I had chord patterns and riffs, but I didn’t know howto connect any of the parts,” DeMartini says. “Writing songs was a process I was still trying to figure out. Once I joined the band, I got better at it.” One of DeMartini's…