“I was in this fold-out chair. The DI was so terrible, because it was going through a generator. It added to the character”: How one of the year’s best metal albums ended up being recorded in Airbnbs, a shed and an RV

If Erik Bickerstaffe’s gargantuan groove through Loathe’s Revenant sounds especially reckless – as if threatening to barrel-roll itself off a cliff – that’s because the guitarist tracked the baritone-driven boom tune as he and the rest of the U.K. act were rumbling down the highway in their RV.

It’s one of the many “throw-it-up-and-just-go” moments he says they experienced while self-recording, producing and mixing their eagerly anticipated third album, A Stranger to You.

“I was in this fold-out chair – the kind you’d have at a barbecue – and I’m proper sunken into it,” Bickerstaffe recalls of the road-roaring session, adding that bassist Feisal El-Khazragi was monitoring the take on a laptop mounted to the motorhome’s kitchen counter. “The DI was so terrible, because it was going through some generator. Once we re-amped it, it added to the character. It is a mental, messy part, anyway.”

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Also recorded in Airbnbs, Bickerstaffe’s shed and – in the case of the drums – Peter Gabriel’s Real World studios, the Liverpudlian quartet’s latest album harnesses a percussive dissonance akin to 2020’s I Let It In and Took Everything, even doubling-down on the intensity through sub-sonic crushers like Revenant and Gemini.

Yet Bickerstaffe also calls their Stranger a more “up-to-date” look at the band’s evolving tastes, further exploring previously hinted-at elements of prog, fusion and shoegaze – the guitarist citing influence from Pat Metheny, Eric Johnson and David Gilmour, as well as Meshuggah.

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Harder to Pretend, written by drummer Sean Radcliffe, conjures plinky, cluster-chorded city pop sophistication, albeit amped up to 11.

The nearly eight-minute Gifted Every Strength rattles the room with grotesquely swung heaviness before shimmering through Bickerstaffe’s smooth-jazzed vibrato solo and a meadow-set acoustic finale.

This all speaks to an ever-growing dynamism that’s pushed Loathe well beyond early goals of “being as loud and as abrasive as possible.”

The guitarist explored tones both explosive and demure through his silver-panel Bassman, as well as several Universal Audio and Neural plugins. He gripped out riffs with Telecasters, Strats, a Lothario baritone and more.

While he recently powered through a playthrough of Revenant to promote Gretsch’s newest line of Electromatic CVT and Jet baritones – his first ad for the guitarmakers – he didn’t get those in time to make the LP.

“It would have been awesome, because they sound absolutely class,” he says, adding with a jesting twinge of regret, “After I'd finished re-recording [for Gretsch], I'd sent it to Ed Al-Shakarchi – who mixed the album with us – and we were both, like, ‘Fuck… this sounds loads better.’”

Bickerstaffe laughs. “It is what it is!”

• A Stranger to You is out now via SharpTone Records.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.