Hello there, and welcome to Guitar World editors’ picks – our monthly guide to the guitar tracks that have captured the attentions of our editors over the past four weeks or so.
With the aid of our Spotify playlist below, we’ve rounded up all our favorite new releases from the month of October, and put them under the microscope to wax lyrical on the playing, tones, and songwriting that have set our six-string senses a-tingling.
Michael Astley-Brown – Editor-in-Chief
I’m back from my travels to Fender Japan and after meeting some awe-inspiring Japanese guitar players (shoutout Rei, Chilli Beans. and Miyavi), I’ve been furiously catching up with the month in new music.
First up, that new Alter Bridge single is one of the best the band has produced in years imo. Maybe recording in 5150 Studios has shaken up their blockbuster hard-rock template, maybe some of EVH’s magic has rubbed off, but Tremonti and Kennedy’s guitars have never sounded bigger, especially on that outrageous ‘melody-shred-melody-shred’ solo.
The latest album from UK sludge metal merchants Conjurer has also been bowling me over. A precision-engineered take on all things doom, it gives the genre a welcome shakeup, with earthen riffs that cascade into proper choruses.
Flipping the script, PRS-toting virtuoso Mei Semones’ latest banger Kurayami is ticking all my math-jazz-pop boxes. Semones treats the guitar almost like an orchestra, her picking hand the conductor’s baton, as dizzying alternate-picked phrases rush on by, accompanied by live string sections. Nobody is making music quite like it.
If Mdou Moctar has recently introduced you to the magic of Tuareg ‘desert rock’ guitar playing, Imarhan should be the next band you check out. With intricate fingerpicked electric lines over pulsing ’80s synths, new single Derhan N’Oulhine is what I imagine Dire Straits would sound like if Mark Knopfler grew up in the deserts of Algeria rather than the streets of Newcastle.
Finally, as a grunge die-hard, I’m thrilled that the ’90s alt-guitar revival has continued to bear fruit – and LA’s Rocket have swooped in as perhaps its brightest stars. New album R is for Rocket is full of explosive dynamics, catchy solos (those tricksy outro pull-offs in The Choice make it one of my faves of the year), and a heck of a lot of fuzz. File next to Momma, early Wolf Alice, and Smashing Pumpkins.
Matt Parker – Deputy Editor
October is a traditionally nutty month in the music industry. Everyone releases everything and then tours everywhere, but this year feels like it’s been particularly bonkers. And then to top it all off, Mike went off to Japan to meet Fender’s new brand ambassador, Godzilla.
On the plus side, I’ve caught shows from Irish alt-rockers SPRINTS, melodic hardcore OGs Strike Anywhere, and punk’s harmony-guitar heroes A Wilhelm Scream, plus my favorite UK post-rock pedalboard-hawkers Alpha Male Tea Party – and all without having to leave the comfort of my hometown of Liverpool.
On the listening front, our staff writer Janelle tipped me to Karma Sheen – a London band who make a mash-up of Hindustani classical and classic rock – and I’ve spent a lot of time admiring the blend of wailing bends and sitar sibilance on Without You (Raag Jog). I’m not the only one, either – Jimmy Page was spotted at a recent gig.
The Orielles were one of those bands that formed when they were about 5 and, thanks to their sibling-based musical shorthand, have evolved at a breakneck rate ever since. Their sound is a psychedelic paint splat that has Pollock-ed everything from post-punk to disco, funk, and a dreamy 90s baggy vibe at the canvas. Newbie Three Halves is a darker number with some driving, urgent, Echo-like guitar work from Henry Carlyle Wade.
Elsewhere, I’m overjoyed to see The Cribs are back. I’m broadly done with the sound of EHX POG, but their return single A Point Too Hard To Make uses it (or something very like it) to make the chorus arpeggio really chime – and now I love it all over again.
Jackson Maxwell – Associate Editor
Happy Halloween, dear readers! Sure, I’ve accessed my inner goth teen here and there this month, but more than that my listening has been mostly fall – comforting and pretty. I said “mostly,” though. Plenty of blues, punk, and shoegaze has made its way into my ears as well.
I can start with nothing other than Whitney’s autumnal gem, Damage. If people knew how much I’ve been listening to this tune they’d probably think me fit for a towering asylum around which lightning is omnipresent and thunder is always cracking. It is Halloween, I guess.
If you’re in any way partial to the slide work of George Harrison, stop what you’re doing. Damage truly has some of the sweetest slide work I’ve ever heard, period. It’s so dynamic, so smooth, and does so much of the melodic heavy lifting – practically every phrase is its own knockout hook. It’s ridiculous.
On an extremely different note, but keeping (it’s a stretch, I know) with the Halloween theme is Jared James Nichols’ Ghost. He’s ostensibly a bluesman, but this all-the-way-into-the-red belter belongs squarely in the here and now. The riff is 18-wheeler size, the chorus radio-friendly, and to cap off its versatility – its solo is perfectly bite-size. Nichols could rear back and let it fly for as long as he wants, but he keeps it – especially the displays of Formula 1 speed – perfect for the song. The highlights, frankly, are the individual notes – listen to the man’s vibrato!
On the pure blues note, meanwhile, props must be given to Eric Bibb’s proudly simple This One Don’t, which features my second favorite display of slide work of the month.
Also on rotation for me this month – Searows’ hypnotic, grunge-y epic, Dearly Missed, Ratboys’ punk earworm Anywhere, and Strange Heaven, the ethereal and jangling new single from the always-brilliant Orchid Mantis.
Matt Owen – News Editor
![Jacob Collier - Sweet Melody [Official Visualiser] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Wz66D3A85kc/maxresdefault.jpg)
I won’t be the first person from Team GW to tell you all about how hectic October has been. Mike went to Japan. Janelle saw some 1959 Les Paul Bursts. Jackson met Tommy Emmanuel. It’s been all go these past few weeks, but I had some fun, too: I had a guitar lesson with Jacob Collier.
I met Jacob in NAMM in January, where I was lucky enough to chat to him about his five-string signature Strandberg. It was truly enlightening, so when I caught wind that he’d be releasing a new album centered solely on the acoustic guitar, I was desperate to sit down with him again to talk about five-string Taylors. He showed me his five-string guitars, discussed his relationship with the instrument, and even gave me a tutorial on how to play one of the songs from his new album.
You’ll have to wait to find out which song that was, but in the meantime go and listen to his new album: The Light for Days is a guitar fan’s dream, putting on display Jacob’s singular approach to the musicality of the instrument, which lends itself to some kaleidoscopic, awe-inspiring songs. Sweet Melody is a particular highlight.
Back in more orthodox six-string territory, I’ve been obsessed with Militarie Gun ever since I heard them being interviewed on BBC Radio 1 the other week. Throw Me Away is excellent, as is their latest single God Save The Gun. In fact, it’s been a particularly rock-heavy month for me: Slow Joy is one of my favorite emerging artists, and Mugshot – the opener from new record A Joy Even Slower – has been on repeat since it dropped.
Of course, I’ve needed some technical guitar insanity in the mix (just to keep myself grounded whenever I get too comfortable with a new riff or lick), and who better than Unprocessed – the band headed up by percussive fusion virtuoso Manuel Gardner Fernandes – for that fix? Head in the Clouds literally sent my head to space. Some of the guitar playing on display is just… words don’t do it justice.
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![Dave Mustaine of Megadeth [left] plays his signature Gibson Flying V live. On the right, an archive pic of Metallica frontman James Hetfield playing his white V copy, in his element circa 1984](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/ZsDUCbn7ybdedwDKg7VxW6-1280-80.jpg.webp)