Peter Hodgson
CD REVIEW: Storm Corrosion
Porcupine Tree and Opeth are both bands with distinctive sounds – Pink Floydian prog rock on one side, and sprawling progressive death metal on the other. So you could be forgiven for expecting a collaboration between each band’s masterminds (Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson, Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt) to be a progressive death metal epic full of odd time signatures, crushing riffs, growled vocals and ambient guitar solos. But for hints as to what you can expect from Storm Corrosion, you need to look into each artist’s most recent works. Wilson’s Grace For Drowning leans more towards lush soundscapes and psychedelic ambience, while Opeth’s Heritage could have come straight out of the seventies, with its vintage progressive rock (rather than progressive metal) elements that share more in common with King Crimson and Yes than Dream Theater and Symphony X.
And it’s here, in the middle of these two releases, that we find Storm Corrosion. The album’s six tracks – the term ‘song’ doesn’t quite cover it in this case – typically end up in a very different place to where they start, with structures that seem dictated by the previous note rather than any adherence to accepted song structures. And that’s a big reason why it’s such an engaging experience.
The Top 50 Australian Guitarists Of All Time
Australian Guitar magazine has just published their list of the top 50 Aussie guitarists of all time. Check it out here! I write for the mag and I helped compile the list. A bunch of us each listed our picks, the results were tallied up, and I think it’s a pretty fair list – there aren’t really any crazy controversial picks like that recent Spin guitarists list! My criteria for my selections was pretty broad. Individuality, innovation, influence, songwriting… it all added up. Then my votes were combined with the others to come up with the final results.
There are some great players who I would like to have seen included, but many of them are featured in a separate article on page 59, such as Chris Brooks, Steve Turner and James Ryan.
What do you think of the list? Who do you think we should have included or excluded?
Unisonic. Brace yourselves.
Check out Unisonic, the new band featuring former Helloween vocalist Michael Kiske and guitarist Kai Hansen (Gamma Ray, ex-Helloween) alongside guitarist Mandy Meyer (Asia, Gotthard and Krokus), bassist Dennis Ward and drummer Kosta Zafiriou (both of Germany’s Pink Cream 69). The album was recorded at ICP Studios in Brussels, Belgium. It features 11 tracks, plus a bonus live version of Helloween classic “I Want Out” only available on the domestic edition, cover art by Martin Häusler (Meat Loaf, Gotthard, Helloween, Motörhead), and marks the first musical union between Kiske and Hansen in 23 years! It’s fairly safe to say if you dig Helloween, you’ll love this! There’s some serious shreddage going on. The album is released in a few weeks but check out the video for their anthem and album opener “Unisonic.”
Turn your speakers up loud.
And here are a few tracks on Soundcloud:
GUEST POST: Norman’s Rare Guitars
This is a re-post of an article from 2010. Thought you might like reading it again if you saw it the first time around, or for the first time if not!
With the overwhelming demand for quality guitars, manufactures had to come up with ways to meet this demand. Over the years many things have changed, and guitar building had to keep up with this ever increasing hunger for quality instruments. These are some of the things that evolved both good and bad.
Quality Tone Woods
Years ago there was a huge stash of aged woods suitable for instrument building. Many instruments were built with woods that were aged 50 years and more. There is no substitute for fine tone woods. As demand increased the supply diminished. As tone woods became scarce, manufactures used artificially aged woods to keep up with the demand. Martin, probably America’s leading acoustic guitar manufacturer is now using sustainable woods on many of their recent guitars. Brazilian rosewood, which is considered by most to be the finest tone wood for flat top guitars, is in very short supply. In 1969 there was an embargo on this wood. Aged Brazilian rosewood is getting close to being nonexistent. Other substitute woods such as Indian rosewood and Madagascar rosewood are currently being used on many higher end models in replacement of Brazilian.
Rock-Paper-Scissors for guitarists
We’ve all played rock-paper-scissors, right? We all know paper covers rock, rock smashes scissors and scissors cut paper (although if rock was more of a type A personality it’d know it could hold the paper down, paperweight-style, and be eternally victorious). But dude, we’re guitarists. Rock-paper-scissors may be fine for origamists, geologists and seamstresses, but it’s not for we rockers. We need our own variant. Well, in that spirit… you’re welcome. All you need is a Boss Metal Zone, an Ibanez Tube Screamer and a Jim Dunlop Fuzz Face. Or at least, the ability to say the names of them.
Fuzz Face beats Metal Zone (fuller bodied tone, more mojo, looks like a robot’s severed head)
Metal Zone beats Tube Screamer (More gain, more EQ control, and your audience will buy more beer than the Tube Screamer guy’s audience will buy whisky)
Tube Screamer beats Fuzz Face (More versatile, cool Ghostbusters green, name sounds like a euphamism for having sex on the London Underground)
See if you can come up with your own!
Hi! I'm Peter Hodgson. I write for Gibson.com, Australian Guitar, Australian Musician, Mixdown Magazine (including my instructional column, 'Unleash Your Inner Rock God,' which has been running since 2007), guitarworld.com, Tone Deaf, Beat (including their weekly hard rock/metal column Crunch) and The Brag. And I'm Assistant Social Coordinator with Seymour Duncan.
I've been playing guitar since I was 8 years old, and I've been writing for magazines since I was 18. I've also worked as a guitar teacher (up to 50 students a week), a setup tech, a newspaper editor, and I've also dabbled in radio a little bit. I live in Melbourne, Australia, and my hobbies include drinking way too much coffee, and eating way too much Mexican food.
You can check out my guitar playing at Reverbnation or on YouTube, and feel free to email me at iheartguitarblog@gmail.com