I have always played and jammed like a man possessed, and my own songs simply flowed nonstop from the very beginning as early as 1960 onward. I still jam constantly, which, to my way of thinking, is the ultimate practice, because it is free form and purely uninhibited and defiant, at least the way I jam it is. Some days I hammer away for hours, some days just a few minutes.

Nobody knows the ins and outs of Jimi Hendrix's guitar sound like Roger Mayer. Mayer introduced Hendrix to his Octavia, a unit that added an octave overtone to the original note. Hendrix loved the sound and used it on the solo to "Purple Haze." The rest, as they say ...

It has been nearly three years since Nothnegal, a Maldivian heavy metal band, released their debut EP, Antidote of Realism. Last year, the band started recording their follow-up full-length release, Decadence, for the independent French label Season of Mist. The album was released this week.

For 40 years, the team of Tipton and band co-founder KK Downing led the heavy metal brigade, introducing a twin-guitar attack to the genre, defining a sound rooted in power chords, palm muting and back-and-forth lead breaks that inspired generations of groups, from Iron Maiden to Slayer.