Tetrarch’s co-founding guitarists – Diamond Rowe and Josh Fore – started making music together nearly 20 years ago when they were still middle-school kids in Atlanta.
Over the years, they’ve developed a sixth-sense intuition where they’re finishing each other’s sentences and locking in sympatico through the groove-bombed, peak-nu-metal-inspired arrangements of the now-L.A.-based outfit’s latest and third full-length, The Ugly Side of Me.
That innate connection was key to course-correcting the record’s first single, Live Not Fantasize, a now-industrialized and devastatingly shredded anthem that lead guitarist Rowe was struggling with in the writing phase, at least before firing it off to Fore.
“I sent it to him, and I remember the text was like, ‘Is this bad? Is this really dad-sounding?’ He was like, ‘It’s not the best,’” Rowe says with a laugh, though she adds that she knew Tetrarch could remodel the track into something spectacular.
Rowe took the song back to the factory – i.e. her home-recording setup – and welded a mechanically menacing four-on-the-floor rhythm onto the demo. Rhythm player Fore helped give the song a tuneup by transforming the once relentlessly jud-hungry main riff into a dramatic, stop-start chunkiness that suggests Tetrarch want us all to hop in the back of their Dragula.
It’s become one of the veteran act’s most monstrous cuts yet, and one of many reasons why their Ugly new album is a thing of beauty.
The first line on the record’s opener, Anything Like Myself, is “I’m stuck in this state of mind.” How does that speak to the experience of making your third record as Tetrarch? Were there any new ways you challenged yourselves throughout the process?
Josh Fore: “That first line is a great [look at] the headspace we were in at the time we were writing the album. There are moments, especially creatively, where you feel like you can’t come up with anything new. You’re like, ‘All my ideas are bad. Do I even know how to write a song?’ I feel like there’s always going to be pressure every time you put out an album to write and do better. I think that’s why that lyric kicked off the record.”
Diamond Rowe: “But a lot of breakthroughs, as far coming into our own as Tetrarch, came with the last album [2021’s Unstable]. With this record, I had the confidence to be like, ‘OK, this is what Diamond sounds like as a lead guitar player.’”
We’ve learned how Diamond sounds in other ways on The Ugly Side of Me. You took the lead vocal on the second verse of Never Again (Parasite), and you’re singing later on the album, too. How did that come up?
I feel like we’ve gone through so much growth and achieved so many things at this point that the confidence was there for me to be like, ‘Sure!’
Fore: “I think we gotta take it all the way back to Unstable for a second. A lot of people don’t know that Diamond did background vocals on some of those songs, like You Never Listen and Take a Look Inside. How that happened was I got really sick on the drive to Denver, and when we got to the studio [Flatline Audio], I couldn’t sing. So, I was like, ‘Diamond, maybe you should try the melody on this one and I’ll just sing a low harmony.’
“Secretly, I always wanted her to sing, because I think she has an awesome voice – she’s always done backgrounds live. Cut to this album, and there came a couple of obvious spots of being like, ‘Maybe you should sing this verse and see how it sounds?’ It was naturally a good fit.”’
Rowe: “I think it comes back to developing confidence in myself, and us as artists. Before Unstable, if he had said, ‘You should sing a verse,’ I would’ve been really nervous about it. I feel like we’ve gone through so much growth and achieved so many things at this point that the confidence was there for me to be like, ‘Sure!’ It was cool to see how [the vocals] came out. It added a different dynamic that some people wouldn’t expect.”
Diamond, your parents have worked in the music business – your mom even sang backup with Morris Day and the Time at one point. Was there a different kind of excitement in sharing those vocal performances with her, compared to showing her a sick solo?
Fore: “I’m going to say she doesn’t want to show her mom anything. [Laughs]”
Rowe: “My mom is a perfectionist. We sent her I’m Not Right from Unstable when we finished recording it, and she got to the end and was like, ‘Why don’t y’all go back to the intro riff at the end?’ We were ending the song with a blast beat, but then… we did it [her way], and it ripped. [Laughs]
“But my mom is the last person we send music to. We want to stay hyped about it as long as possible. It’s like in [2004 Metallica documentary] Some Kind of Monster when Lars [Ulrich] shows [music to] his dad, and his dad says the whole album is trash, and then Lars feels terrible. It’s like that with my mom. [Laughs]
“When we send her something now, we have to feel really good about it, and then we hold our breath. Like, please don’t hate it. She does have a good ear, though.”
Josh, if Diamond is stepping up to the mic a little more these days, did that inspire you at all to step up your guitar playing? Rather, did you want to jump into any huge leads on this album?
Fore: “No, my lead-playing days ended a long time ago. When we were a thrash band, every now and then we’d have this astronomically long solo section in our set where she would solo, then I would trade off, and then she would trade off again. But I’m very comfortable letting her fill that role.
“I love playing guitar, but I also pride myself on being the best entertainer I can be when we get onstage. I do my best to control an audience and to get everybody into [the spirit of a] Tetrarch show. So I’m good with Diamond playing the leads.”
Diamond, let’s look at one of the biggest solos on this record, Live Not Fantasize. It feels like you’re taking us through multiple eras; it has that classic, ‘80s anthemic shred to the beginning. There’s the Whammy pedal manipulation and production effects in the mid-section. There’s an all-out tap clinic, too. How did you go about sculpting that lead?
I wasn’t a metal elitist, like, ‘I can only listen to Cephalic Carnage.’ I liked everything metal
Rowe: “It wasn’t necessarily me being like, ‘I want to go on a journey and add some ’80s shreddin’ here.’ I just think you can hear my mixture of influences. My favorite players coming up were everyone from Kirk Hammett and Dave Mustaine, to Head [Brian Welch] from Korn, to Dimebag Darrell and Zakk Wylde, to Mark Morton of Lamb of God. They span over generations, and they all have different ways of playing leads.
“I wasn’t a metal elitist, like, ‘I can only listen to Cephalic Carnage.’ I liked everything metal. I didn’t discriminate. So I learned a lot from a lot of different players. And I love tapping! Back when I was learning to play guitar, that was one of the coolest things to me. I feel like you don’t hear that quite as much now, but I still love it.
“I also love the Korn guys and their ominous-sounding guitar layers. I like adding that into solos, with the manipulation and the whammy effects, because it brings that ominous feel to the solos.”
Diamond, at what point in the recording did you get one of your Jackson Pro Series Signature DR12MG EVTN6’s into your hands?
Rowe: “I received my first custom shop right before we went into the studio. So I guess that would have been at the beginning of 2023. We did a blind shootout, and Dave [Otero], our producer, was like ‘Let’s throw the Diamond custom shop in there and see if it can stand up to the other guitars.’ It ended up being a frontrunner for the tracking of the record before I even got the production models.”
Josh, have you played Diamond’s guitar much?
Fore: “First and foremost, I’m very proud of Diamond, because I remember us being in middle school, playing all day in Guitar Center and looking at signatures on the wall, and being like, ‘Man, it’d be cool to have our own one day.’
“I’m crazy-proud, because it’s such an accomplishment. But, yeah, it feels really good. I’m an ESP artist, and I love my ESPs, but I also love Diamond’s guitar. It’s sick and perfect for her and Tetrarch.”
What guitar were you playing on the record?
Fore: “The main one for me was my [LTD] TE-1000 Evertune, specifically the ’burst one. I play a black one live, but we used the ’burst for the majority of the rhythms. I had used one of Head’s ESP 7-string signatures for a super low-tuned song, but that one didn’t end up making the album.”
And the guitar amps?
Fore: “The final rhythm tones ended up being an EVH 5150III, which is what we use live. For me it was literally a noise gate, a Tube Screamer and a 5150III into a cab. It gets the job done. We also did a lot of the writing with the Gojira Neural DSP plugin, but at the end of the day it came down to a real amp, the 5150III.”
Diamond, what’s involved in terms of getting that watery, ominous tone in your playing?
Rowe: “Everyone’s always trying to get to the bottom of the Freak tone [ed. named after Tetrarch’s 2017 album of the same name]. We’ve used a couple of different things to achieve it. When we first started, we developed that using a POD Farm. It’s super-antiquated, and it literally crashes Dave’s computer trying to use that now.
“But what was cool about it at the time was that it had a sine wave chorus on it, which was hard for us to find in another analog pedal. To this day it reigns supreme, but live I generally use a Uni-Vibe, a Boss Delay… I think there’s a chorus on it. And reverb.”
Fore: “We’ve gotten to a place where as long as there’s some combination of those effects, whether it’s on a modeler or with pedals, we can pretty much get it close. I think it just comes down to [twisting] the knobs until it sounds right. We’re not technical at all.”
Since you’d mentioned the Gojira Neural DSP – Diamond, how wild was it for you to see Christian Andreu from Gojira playing one of your signature guitars live on their last U.S. tour?
Rowe: “It’s nuts! I’ve always said that if I was ever lucky enough to get a signature model, it would be a dream to be able to go and gift them to a handful of players that inspired me beyond belief, from the time I was in middle school to now. I feel like I wouldn’t be here without them. I just want them to have one as [a show of] gratitude.
I love Gojira! To see one of your guitar heroes playing a guitar that you built from the ground up – and that has my name on it – is awesome
“We found out that Korn was doing their 30th anniversary show here [ed. last fall at Los Angeles’ BMO Stadium] and Gojira was on the show as well, so I was like, ‘I have to go give Christian a guitar, and I have to give Head a guitar.’ My guitar tech happens to Christian’s tech as well, so I hit him up. I was able to give the guitars to both of those guys, and they were so appreciative and awesome about it.
“I think it was in Portland, Oregon, but someone sent me a picture [of Christian on stage] and was like, ‘Isn’t this your guitar?’ and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ Not long after that, my tech sent me a picture from side-stage, and he told me which songs Christian played it on. The kid in me got super-excited.
“I love Gojira! To see one of your guitar heroes playing a guitar that you built from the ground up – and that has my name on it – is awesome.”
- The Ugly Side of Me is out now via Napalm.
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
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