Innovative instrumental guitarists are a rare breed. Most still stick to recycling Satriani licks over stock-issue backing tracks. The standard has been set and met many times, but rarely exceeded.
Yossi Sassi is a notable exception. This guy has mastered many stringed instruments, the electric guitar being just one – and he’s even masterminded the creation of an entirely new instrument, the bouzoukitara – half guitar, half bouzouki. In short, Yossi Sassi is pretty much a one-man orchestra.
Fans of Jimmy Page’s ‘Guitar Army’ approach to composition and arrangement will instantly Read more…
It’s often said that money is the root of all evil.
Looking around at the world, it can be hard to argue otherwise. Numbers dominate and define our lives, limits, sometimes even our loves. With Profit, The Jelly Jam go straight for the corporate world’s jugular – and throughout this album’s twelve-song track listing, the Western world’s unquenchable craving for cold hard cash is examined from a variety of creative and thoughtful angles.
Given The Jelly Jam’s lineup – guitarist/vocalist Ty Tabor (King’s X), John Myung (Dream Theater), and drummer Rod Morgenstein (The Dixie Dregs, Winger) – it goes without saying that as far as musicianship goes, these guys have Read more…
Authentic originality is hard to come by in music. Every style comes complete with its own formula, and countless bands follow their respective recipes in lockstep with each other. The result? Bland, beige sameness.
Even in the prog world, copycat clone bands abound. One band brings a unique style to the table, and scores of followers follow it down to the last EQ notch on a guitar amp. Finding something fresh, new, and interesting can be a tough slog at times.
If you’re bored of soundalikes, Haken are here to save your day – and possibly Read more…
Way back in the day, a little band called Flipcycle were one of the best acts in my local area. Their sets marked some of the earliest times I was exposed to progressive-leaning music, something entirely different from the rap metal and boy-bands that were popular at the time. Even back then, Flipcycle guitarist Al Heslop was already incredible at placing the oddest riffs and licks in precisely the right places, a master of musical timing and tasteful composition.
Since then, Al’s moved on from Flipcycle (and the equally cool but sadly also defunct pilot.passenger) to form Heights – a band who boast not only none-more-prog album titles (their most recent being Phantasia On The High Processions of Sun, Moon And Countless Stars Above) and a trio format including über-bassist John Hopkin and Tesseract drummer Jay Postones, but also a style centred once more upon perfect timing. Every note counts when Al Heslop’s involved, and he’s also been busy making a name for himself as a producer for most of the past decade, running the Bracknell-based Creative Control Studio in the luxurious grounds of South Hill Park Arts Centre. Al’s worked with some of the UK’s most promising underground bands, including my own personal favourites Eschar and For Astronauts And Satellites, applying the same level of painstaking attention to detail to others’ tunes as he does to his own.
For this in-depth interview, TMMP caught up with Al to discuss his past, present, and future…
What’s your earliest musical memory?
I can remember mucking about on an old out of tune upright piano that my grandparents had at the time. I was probably about two or three at the time; I remember trying to write Read more…
Who says interviews have to be super serious? Behold these beautiful answers from Good Tiger’s own Morgan Sinclair…
You successfully crowdfunded your album A Head Full Of Moonlight seriously quickly – and now you’re working with Blacklight Media and Metal Blade Records. What thoughts and feelings are floating around the Good Tiger camp right now?
There’s a lot of ambiguity surrounding how much the human mind thinks. Some scientists argue that we process somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 thoughts a day – so honestly, we’re Read more…
You never know what’s going to happen in Brighton on a Saturday night.
When Toska (97%) are on a lineup, though, you can always expect to be blown away. Time and time again, I’ve watched these guys tear venues apart – and with an extended tour behind them, Toska are now capable of pulling off next-next level performances. Holy hell.
Opening their opening set with two new tunes (A Tall Order and Congress), Toska wasted no time getting stuck into an unrelenting barrage of ultra-complex instrumetal moments. Eschewing Read more…
If you’re a UK-based rock, metal, and/or punk fan, you need to be at Camden Rocks Festival this year. The lineup is fucking ear-watering, totalling 200 bands performing live and in your face over the course of one single day and multiple London venues.
At the time of writing, 80 bands still have yet to be announced – but of those we do know about, here are seven of my personal favourites:
SikTh
As any self-respecting tech-metal fan knows, SikTh are absolutely sick. Returning to shatter minds after an extended split via a series of rapturously received reunion shows and last December’s awe-inspiring Opacities, SikTh are continuing to Read more…
If you need proof that black clouds can have silver linings, here it is.
Cleft pretty much define modern instrumental math-rock, summoning and summarily mutating the spirits of everyone from Tom Morello to Metallica, Muse, Biffy Clyro and Royal Blood while ensuring such Read more…
Tech-metal fans have nine tracks of auditory win to look forward to come the end of this May, in the form of Visions’ sophomore effort, Shake The Earth. With that ear-watering fact in mind, I got talking to Visions bass-wrangler Dave Evans about all things Shake The Earth-related – and why not giving a fuck is the best policy…
Your new album Shake The Earth is coming out on May 30. What thoughts and feelings are going through your mind right now?
Excitement! It’s been so long since we’ve had new music out.
Our first album came out in 2011, but some of those songs were written way back in 2006, so this feels similar in the sense that we’ve been sitting on some of this material for so long without Read more…
Since emerging in 2011, Babymetal have blown up worldwide – and although in some corners people express a passionate desire to see Babymetal actually blown up, those of us who’re capable of taking life less seriously have embraced them simply because Babymetal are fucking fun.
Metal Resistance hammers the humour angle home immediately, as Dragonforce guitarists Herman Li and Sam Totman lend their lightspeed skills to Read more…
