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.

Opener “Drag Ropes” takes on a folky character filtered through a much darker sensibility, almost like the ambient noise lifted out of the weirder moments of David Bowie’s 1.Outside album. The reliance on repeated rhythms and stacked layers recalls Mike Keneally’s acoustic-based Wooden Smoke album or some of Crimson’s more moody pieces. The title track is propelled by guitar arpeggios and an almost A Perfect Circle-esque vocal performance before darker layers flow in. “Hag” starts off contemplative, almost menacing, flirting with darker vibes before becoming almost a Mr Bungle Disco Volante-era fuzz jam. “Happy” turns things around in a sort of ‘Radiohead making a soundtrack for a space documentary in the 1970s’ vibe, with close-mic’d acoustic guitars interspersed with heavily reverbed electric fusion melodies and trippy effects. “Lock Howl” builds tension with a tremolo’d organ, joined by an insistent rhythm and more spacious arpeggios. And the listener is brought back down to Earth again with the moody, free-time atmosphere of “Ljudet Innan” – all 10 minutes and 20 seconds of it.

Storm Corrosion is not a difficult listen, but it’s one that requires the right mood and setting to fully absorb, especially if you were hoping for something more straightforward and indicative of Wilson and Åkerfeldt’s day jobs. The first listen or two can be a little jarring, but if you let the album seduce you into its little world, it can be difficult to let yourself get out again.

Storm Corrosion is out now via Roadrunner Records.

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?

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:

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.

As you might imagine, woods are the primary ingredient in fine guitars. The quality of the guitar is dependent on fine ingredients as well as fine design.

Quality Luthiers
As demand increased, in an effort to fill orders builders with less experience were needed to build fine instruments. Because of inexperience the quality of many instruments suffered. After the Beatles, demand went through the roof, and people were being brought in off the street to build guitars. Prior to this time Luthiers were lifelong dedicated employees of the manufactures and spent their whole lives learning the fine art of building guitars. Currently a lot of manufactures are using CNC machinery to build instruments. This is cookie cutter in fashion and instruments don’t have the individual personality that would come from each individual builder, like in the old days.

Fine Design
An instrument can only be as good as its design. Bracing patterns, both under the top of an instrument as well as its sides, back, and neck are a major part of an instruments make-up. Neck angle has a lot to do with how playable an instrument will be. Proper construction is the determining factor as to how well an instrument will play and sound.

Alloys
As far as electric instruments are concerned the pickups in older guitars have a certain inexplicable tone that the newer instruments don’t have. Alloys used in the winding of these pickups are different from the ones used back in the day. Because the number of windings inside the pickups varied, instruments produced their own individual tone. Each instrument varied tremendously. This is what gives vintage guitars their own individual tone.

With all the above elements, there is a tremendous difference between vintage instruments and current. Although the quality of a lot of the new instruments is quite high, the individual personality of instruments is not the same as instruments built back in the day.

Norman Harris is the owner of Norman’s Rare Guitars in Tarzana, California. Norm specializes in high end vintage guitars in addition to basses, amps, and accessories.

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!

The MXR Custom Shop’s Custom Comp is built around the hard-to-find CA3080 ‘metal can’ IC (integrated circuit) used in several classic pedals of days gone by. This part is pretty rare and it’s no surprise that the Custom Comp’s Custom Shop origin denotes a level of exclusivity – who knows when MXR will come across a batch of CA3080s again? The Custom Comp also includes special RF suppression components to reduce interference. This is a very good thing. I love my little Dyna Comp to bits, but part of its vibe is that it’s kinda noisy and imperfect. Some players love that – hell, it’s what drew me to the pedal in the first place – but such gritty mojo is not for everyone, so the Custom Comp offers a much cleaner alternative. The controls consist of Output and Sensitivity pots, and there’s also an internal Attack control (accessed by removing the back plate, where you can also get at the battery compartment) and tweaking the control with a screwdriver. The unit is finished off with a TPDT (triple pole double throw) switch for true bypass.

Compared to my dear little Dyna Comp, the Custom Comp sounds crisp and defined across all frequency ranges. Love the snap and quack of your single coils but need to squash the dynamic range down to a more manageable level? The Custom Comp will do it with ease. Need to increase the oomph of your overdriven, humbucker rhythm tracks just a little bit without altering the gain structure? No sweat. The Custom Comp is so transparent and so quiet that unless you really peg the Sensitivity control and the internal Attack pot for a violent compressing effect, it can be easy to forget it’s there – until you turn it off. In fact, you can choose to either use it as a specific effect (say, for the intro to Under The Bridge), or to provide a sort of approximation of studio mastering across your entire guitar sound.

The Custom Comp is pro-level gear for those who need studio-quality compression at very low noise levels, but who also need the convenience of a pedal. It’s as sturdy as any other MXR pedal (which is to say, you could probably use one to hammer in a nail and it’d still work – but don’t try it at home just in case), and it sounds great for any musical application, whether you want to draw attention to it as an effect or to just even out your guitar sound for presentation in a gig setting.

LINK: JimDunlop.com

The ‘We Might As Well Start Now’ Start

Nothing rocks more than being drawn into a set from the very beginning by a well-conceived opening. Whether it’s some kind of well-done intro tape (like Metallica using ‘The Ecstasy Of Gold’); an atmospheric, moodily-lit stage beginning to swell with sound; or a curtain drop to a harsh white light as the band leaps into a high-energy punkfest, the way you begin your gig has to make an impact. So why do so many bands at the club level think it’s okay to walk out onto the stage, start to tune their instruments and maybe mess around with their pedals a bit until the singer says ‘Um, we might as well start now… uh… okay. 1… 2… 3… oh wait, what’s our first song? Oh yeah. 1… 2… 3… 4…”? It doesn’t matter if you’re just playing at the local watering hole or if you’re filling Madison Square Garden. Establish a definite beginning to your set.

Making A Big Deal About Tuning Down To Drop D

“Okay, that song was called ‘Promised Land.’ Next up we’re gonna play a song called ‘Silent Scream.’ It’s in Drop D. So uh, we’re just gonna, y’know, tune to Drop D.” What follows is about 90 seconds of incrementally descending low notes and out-of-tune power chord strums while everyone zeroes in on that elusive whole-tone drop. Guys, this is what the mute button on your tuner is for. Don’t subject your audience to this crap. Bring along an extra guitar or retune discretely.

The Bit Where You Get On Your Knees And Make Science Fiction Noises With Your Delay Pedal

Did you know that when you turn up the feedback knob on a delay pedal and then move the time control up and down, you get spacey, oscillatey, science-fictony sounds? Yes, of course you did, because every person who ever got their hands on a delay pedal discovered this within about 20 seconds of plugging in. Doesn’t mean you have to torture your audience with it. This is always done with such an air of pretension: “Oh look at me – I’m so awesome that I transcend the mantle of mere guitar player and am in fact a Sound Sorcerer. Listen as I kneel before my pedalboard conjure squealing Theremin-like notes from thin air.” For extra pretension points, throw in a few other pedals at the same time (wah and fuzz are especially cliche) or if you’re really ninja, hit a few delay pedals at once. Show you are a true douche by concluding your noise solo by kneeling with your head down for a few minutes, as if you need some time to come back to the real world after the blissful few minutes spent in your internal Technicolor wonderland.

The Ironic Cover.

‘Dude, we should totally cover, like, Lady Gaga, or um, Britney Spears or something.’ ‘Dude, Britney Spears was like ten years ago.’ ‘Oh. Well what about Hanson?’ *facepalm*

The End-Of-Gig Feedback Thing

Last song’s done. Let’s lean our guitars against the amps and walk off while they feed back. Nah, it’ll be awesome. Then some poor roadie’s gonna have to come out and unceremoniously switch the amps off. Or we’ll have to walk back out onto the stage and turn them off ourselves and then strike our own gear, which really shatters the ‘don’t give a fuck’ image that the End-Of-Gig Feedback Thing is supposed to portray.

Can you think of any others? Comment below!

Whoa.

And there’s a DVD about Rob’s collection too, which you can get here. Trailer below!

Here’s part 1, in which Gore wires up his Les Paul with the wildly flexible Jimmy Page setup.

Here’s part 2, in which things get way crazy with Triple Shot mounting rings and a germanium overdrive.

And here’s the postscript, wherein we learn what happens next!

Legendary bass player Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn has died aged 70 while on tour in Japan. Initial reports indicate that Dunn died in his sleep. Dunn was legendary for his work with Booker T. & The MGs and the Blues Brothers Band.