“What I do with the trem arm is not an exact science. It’s more like an absurdist alchemy”: Imperial Triumphant guitarist Zachary Ezrin showcases his wild whammy technique on Eye of Mars – and a Gibson with the Midas touch
Avant-garde metallers Imperial Triumphant have made waves in recent years thanks to their unique blend of cacophonous extreme metal, jazz fusion, impending-doom-sized orchestrations, and angular weirdness.
In this Guitar World-exclusive playthrough of new single Eye of Mars, guitarist Zachary Ezrin showcases the mad techniques that go into crafting their cataclysmic sound – including some nifty employment of his wild whammy technique.
The whammy bar of his heavily modded Gibson V90 Flying V is craftily used to add subtle wavers to full chords, and gives an eerie aura to his propulsive trem picking. Much of the song is performed with it locked in his grip.
“The tremolo arm is everything,” Ezrin tells us of his approach. “It allows me to put vibrato on big chords as well as bend to the notes between the notes: the microtonal world.
“Even for just basic strumming, I like to keep it in my fingers to add a slight dissonant oscillation to everything. I want to make my riffs sound like a warped record.
“It's not just the trem arm but also the floating bridge as well. If I bend notes up while playing open strings, they detune and you get this marvelous dissonant pseudo-glissando. What I do with isn’t an exact science; it's more like an absurdist alchemy.”
For Ezrin, the punishing song “is a window into the fully realized Imperial Triumphant”, as the band settles on a winning recipe for its diverse metal broth.
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“We have explored many worlds within our records,” he expands, “and I feel we have finally found the sweet spot.”
Performed in New Jersey’s Backroom Studios where the album was tracked, the barraging wrist-killer represents every facet of the band’s wide-reaching sound, which draws from Slayer as much as it does classical composers.
“György Ligeti, Penderecki, and Shostakovich influence our music I’d say as equally as metal bands. Maybe more,” Ezrin goes on to explain. “Ligeti’s use of chromatic tone cluster chords and dissonant swells can be found littered all over our music”.
Here, such swells are given a fresh metal revamp thanks to Ezrin’s skin-prickling whammy methods.
Through their music, Imperial Triumphant are hellbent on encapsulating the “terrifying” aspects of the composer’s creations, and Ezrin’s eybrow-raising Gibson V90 has proven to be a key pillar in that gut-churning quest.
“I’ve given it the Midas touch – I call it the ‘Babylon Luxe II,’” he says of the guitar, which is tuned to E standard, so that he and bass player Steve Blanco occupy very different sonic spaces.
“I’ve pulled all the stock fake EMG pickups out of it and installed a custom wound Avedissian with a gold H-cover, put in gold frets, gold Grover imperial tuners, and a German-made gold Floyd Rose, of course.
(Image credit: Alex Krauss)
“Then I stenciled the pickguard and truss cover and had them cut in gold mirror and brass. I’ve played probably over 150 shows with it now and with all its scratches and old champagne crusted on, it’s still my favorite guitar.”
The mods have even encouraged Gibson’s NYC team to get involved to provide support and expertise to the “insane project”, and the results are stunning. It perfectly harmonizes with the band’s ominous, cult-ish, and gilden aesthetic, making it one of the most unique Flying Vs around. It’s an axe befitting a band that so mercilessly pushes sonic boundaries.
Ezrin has previously spoken to Guitar World about not caring about “hitting the note perfectly” when creating his jazz-inspired black metal maelstrom. It’s a warts n’ all approach to guitar playing that helps make the band’s music so daring and... well, imperious.
Eye of Mars has been released ahead of Imperial Triumphant’s forthcoming album, Goldstar, due for release next year.
A freelance writer with a penchant for music that gets weird, Phil is a regular contributor to Prog, Guitar World, and Total Guitar magazines and is especially keen on shining a light on unknown artists. Outside of the journalism realm, you can find him writing angular riffs in progressive metal band, Prognosis, in which he slings an 8-string Strandberg Boden Original, churning that low string through a variety of tunings. He's also a published author and is currently penning his debut novel which chucks fantasy, mythology and humanity into a great big melting pot.
