Eternal Descent + Calabash Animation = awesome
Eternal Descent and Calabash Animation launch Animated Series on IndieGoGo Star studded heavy metal series from IDW Publishing puts music and comics in motion.
The Eternal Descent comic series from IDW Publishing has bridged the worlds of music and comics like no other, with an army of chart topping heavy metal stars including Joe Satriani, Wayne Static, Gus G, Arch Enemy, Periphery, Shadows Fall, and many more appearing throughout the saga.
In our continued effort to explore the unholy alliance between heavy metal and high fantasy, we’ve teamed up with Calabash Animation, the acclaimed animation studio led by Sean Henry and Wayne Brejcha, to bring you an animated reimagining of Eternal Descent!
Having tested our mettle with a 2 minute animated preview, we’re now in pre-production for a 22 minute pilot episode, which would realize Eternal Descent as a fully animated TV show. It’s our pleasure to announce that Mike Sizemore is handling the script, and if you love animation, fantasy, and heavy guitars, then this could be the show you’ve been waiting for! See the preview and find out how you can get involved at: www.indiegogo.com/eternaldescent
REVIEW: Seymour Duncan Gus G. FIRE Blackouts
There are plenty of benefits to be gained from using active pickups, not the least of which are low noise and high signal integrity over long cable runs. But not everyone loves the sound of typical actives. EMGs are well known for their killer metal tone – they’ve driven the tones of players like Metallica’s Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield, Zakk Wylde and Devin Townsend to name just a few – and their single coils were long used by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour. Seymour Duncan seems to be especially good at spotting holes in the market, and there was a pretty glaring one in the active sector: players who want the benefits of active pickups but would prefer a more organic tone. The Blackouts series of pickups do a great job of this, but the Blackouts Modular Preamp is another very clever approach to the issue.
Available separately and in the Blackouts Coil Pack and Gus G FIRE Blackouts System signature set (which is featured in some of Gus’s signature ESP and LTD guitar models), the BMP-1s replaces your existing volume pot, throws in a 9v battery, and allows you to get a high gain active guitar sound from any passive four-conductor pickup. In Gus’s case, the BMP-1s is combined with a matched pair of low-out Alnico 5-loaded passive humbuckers. Gus explains: “This system combines the massive tone, kick, and distortion of Blackouts with the rich tone and expressive feel of my favorite passive pickups. It responds perfectly to all my picking techniques, and more of my personality comes through than with any active pickup I’ve tried.” Naturally Gus needs plenty of sonic versatility within the rock/metal realm, since he does double time in Firewind and as Ozzy Osbourne’s guitarist.
Musikmesse 2012: Gibson Custom Kirk Hammett Flying V
Everyone knows Kirk Hammett used a Gibson Flying V extensively with Metallica before he started using ESPs – and he still works with ESP, releasing several cool new signature models this year – but Hammett has also returned to his roots in the form of this new Gibson Custom V, a replica of his old axe. Continue reading
REVIEW: ESP Horizon FR 27
I’ve always been an admirer of ESP’s Horizon body shape, ever since I saw Devin Townsend holding one on the cover of Guitar World when he was in Steve Vai’s band. Part traditional, part sleek modern and, in Townsend’s words, “It looks like Satan,” the Horizon is a great platform for experimentation. The arched, carved top is comfortable and attractive whether it’s finished in a solid colour or a transparent finish over quilted maple, the recessed controls are comfortable, and it can be a wildly different guitar depending on whether you go for a Floyd Rose model or a fixed bridge one, and if you rock active or passive pickups. Part of ESP’s Japanese-made Standard Series, the Horizon FR 27 is an alder-bodied superstrat with a three piece maple neck, neck thru construction with super-comfortable neck/body carve, snappy 25.5″ scale length, and smoky-looking black nickel hardware. The fretboard is ebony, and the bridge is an original Floyd Rose double locking unit.
The neck features 27 — yes, 27 – extra jumbo frets, although the last one doesn’t quite extend all the way up to the low E string thanks to the curved fretboard edge. The neck pickup is a Seymour Duncan SHR-1n single coil-sized humbucker which slants along with the fretboard, while the bridge pickup is a Seymour Duncan TB-14 ‘Custom’ model. There’s a three way pickup selector switch, a master volume control, and a master tone pot which doubles as a push-push coil split. Oh and the fretboard is scalloped from the 12th fret to the 24th, which makes a huge difference to playability but is a subtle enough modification that you might not even notice it if you see the guitar hanging on the wall in a store.
INTERVIEW: Soulfly’s Max Cavalera
As founding member of Sepultura, Max Cavalera’s place in the books of metal history is assured. Even before the epoch-changing Roots, Max was carving it up with classic tracks like “Dead Embryonic Cells,” “Refuse/Resist” and “Troops of Doom.” But in 1996 Max split from Sepultura and went out on his own with Soulfly, a sometimes-rotating collective of incredibly able metal musicians. Initially Soulfly’s work carried on the tribal metal vibe of Roots, before the band started to carve out a niche of its own. And yet there was always the spectre of the Sepultura sound lurking in the background. Max’s other band, The Cavalera Conspiracy with his brother Iggor, has taken up the challenge in giving the world new music in the Sepultura mode. That seems to have freed up Max’s writing even further and fed into Soulfly’s latest, Enslaved. Just as previous Soulfly albums have demonstrated different facets of Max’s metal vision, the new one presents yet another side: full-on skull-crushing death metal. It’s an imposing, aggressive, brutal, jagged, glass-chewing, blood-spitting freak of an album. And Max is justifiaby proud.
This year Soulfly is celebrating its 15 anniversary. That’s a long time!
It is, man! It’s unbelievable. Sometimes I look back and I think it feels like yesterday that we were recording the first record in California. And now fifteen years later this is our eighth record. So many songs, so many tours, the band is still rolling and the band is even more popular now than ever.
How would you describe Enslaved compared to the last one, Omen?
It’s more extreme. We have an extreme metal drummer who joined the band called David Kinkade who comes a school of death metal playing. He comes from a band called Borknagar and they’re a death metal band from Norway. He plays with double bass and blast beats. A very extreme way of playing. We actually built those songs around him. I was very influenced by that, so some of the stuff even sounds like old Morbid Angel and old Death and Suffocation. So it’s really going to surprise a lot of people. It’s a very extreme Soulfly record, the most extreme Soulfly record of all of them. The most extreme record we’ve done for all the times.
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