“He’s a weapon. He came back with that over a couple of nights. He really tortured himself”: How Guthrie Govan ended up on prog masters Karnivool’s latest album – which was in the works for 13 years

Legendary Australian prog band Karnivool have just unleashed their fourth album, In Verses – their first record in a whopping 13 years.

And, as is fitting for an album that has been brewing for over a decade, it features its fair share of tasty riffs, solos, and soundscapes – including a special appearance from electric guitar virtuoso Guthrie Govan, the band's first ever guest soloist since their inception over two decades ago.

“We can't tell you who it is, can we? We'll have to kill you,” quips Mark Hosking, one half of the band's guitar duo, when asked about one of the album's standout tracks, Reanimation in an interview with Guitar World. “First time guest appearance... It's not really a secret.”

“That's the one and only Guthrie Govan on that,” continues fellow guitar wielder, Drew Goddard. “He's a weapon, that guy.”

As for why Govan jumped on the track, Goddard admits that, although he tried “a few things” in place of what would eventually become The Aristocrats guitarist's solo, they weren't quite working.

“We're throwing out the idea of, maybe, it doesn't need anything at all. There's also a sort of choir vocal that we had in there, which we ended up taking out after Guthrie did his thing.

“He was keen, and he came back with that over a couple of nights. It was very last-minute, so he really tortured himself – really stretched himself. We're very appreciative of him doing that.”

Turns out, Govan not only contributed a solo but also inspired the inclusion of bagpipes (of all instruments) on the album's final track, Salva.

“Guthrie's actually got something to do with that story as well” explains Goddard. “The idea of bagpipes was around. Jon [Stockman], the bass player, did this guitar part on the demo, which was this tinny sort of thing, that sort of sounded like that [bagpipes].

“But while we were recording, there was an interview with Hans Zimmer [that] Rick Beato was doing. He was talking about how someone complimented him on the bagpipes on the Dune soundtrack, and he said that, actually, they're not real. That's Guthrie playing it on the guitar.”

He continues, “We went and saw Guthrie during the process, because [record producer] Forrester [Savell] had worked on The Aristocrats album, too. To get the idea of bagpipes, we just downloaded an impulse response for the Axe-Fx and got this rough one take of the drone the whole way through.

“We did this pentatonic thing that a non-piper like myself would think a bagpipe solo could do. The song's in B, which is a semitone above what the bagpipes [can play], so we thought, 'Well, maybe we should try some real bagpipes.'”

Thankfully, the band had a bagpiper at hand – Hosking’s cousin, Grant Scroggie – and his input helped create an intriguing and eerie “guitar-pipes” effect.

Salva - YouTube

Watch On

Guitar World's interview with Karnivool's Drew Goddard and Mark Hosking will be published in the coming weeks.

In more Guthrie Govan news, The Aristocrats bassist Bryan Beller recently recalled the moment he met the virtuoso and formed a new kind of supergroup.