When Alek Darson was hired to mix and master a batch of demos, it seemed like the kind of straightforward job he regularly handles in his Port Colborne, Ontario studio. Instead, the guitarist and producer found himself pulled into Inner Child, the progressive project led by guitarist Carlos Borges and anchored by Animals As Leaders drummer Matt Garstka.

By the time the self-titled debut was finished, Darson had contributed lead and rhythm guitar, bass, keyboards and programming – while producing, engineering, mixing and mastering the album too.

Borges had initially presented himself as a client, but Darson recalls the job kept expanding: “We need bass for this part. We need guitars for this.” Soon he was adding solos, reshaping sections and suggesting arrangements. Most of the album was assembled remotely before the team spent four days tracking drums with Garstka at East Iris Studios in Nashville.

Calling Inner Child progressive metal only gets you partway there. The music moves through odd meters, jazz-fusion phrasing, heavy riffing and quieter passages, while guitars, keyboards and orchestration shift underneath. Garstka’s drumming can be explosive and hyper-detailed, while string arrangements push the music well beyond a standard trio.

There’s virtuosity everywhere – but the record unfolds in layers rather than simply overwhelming the listener. That complexity makes Darson’s guitar choices more interesting. Much of Inner Child lives in clean and edge-of-breakup territory rather than constant high gain, which pushed him outside his comfort zone.

“A 5150, chugging along: that’s my happy place,” he admits. The cleaner approach gave him room to experiment, especially with economy-picking concepts from longtime influence Frank Gambale.

For the heavier material he leaned on his WoodGuerilla Ghost of Isabel, a multiscale eight-string with a 26.5-to-27.5-inch scale and Fishman Fluence pickups. He likes the glassy top end, while the extended scale gives the lowest strings an almost piano-like fundamental.

He uses an unusual E-A-D-A-D-G-B-E tuning that opens up less predictable low-register voicings. When he wanted something warmer, he reached for Puffy, his neck-through WoodGuerilla seven-string and longtime touring workhorse.

Darson’s amp world is equally modern. He’s largely moved to Fractal’s Axe-Fx platform after years of hauling traditional rigs, but he says searching for the right tones still feels like swapping amps, cabinets and microphones in a studio. Some DI tracks were also re-amped through Cubase’s stock VST amp simulator, particularly for clean sounds. Darson may miss the physical ritual of using real amps, but as he puts it: “They've nailed it in the box.”

He says his “producer brain” is always involved when choosing instrument tones as “half of the mix is within the arrangement.” If a guitar needs drastic EQ later, his instinct is to question the part, voicing or register first. Picking a sound and arranging a part are really the same process: making sure every layer earns its space.

There were moments when the Inner Child project was quite challenging. For Solace Darson wrote a sweeping, nearly chromatic unison with the synth that became one of the hardest guitar passages he’s ever tackled.

“I don’t think I've ever practiced anything that much in my entire life!” he says. “I can barely play it at tempo.”

It’s a revealing admission from an accomplished progressive guitarist whose technical vocabulary can make difficult parts sound almost casual. His fretboard fluency was built over many years – he started aged 10 on his mother’s nylon-string in Belgrade, then heard Dream Theater's Images and Words as a teenager and was floored by the unison passage in Metropolis Pt.1.

He later studied counterpoint, harmony, figured bass and solfege while touring, as the Eastern-influenced music around him provided an almost subconscious education in odd meters. Berklee had long been the dream; once financial help made it possible, he moved to Boston. Years after Dream Theater first inspired him, he found himself playing guitar and bass on Jordan Rudess’ 2019 solo album Wired for Madness.

The title Inner Child also became unexpectedly personal – as an only child who spent much of his youth looking inward, Darson connected with the idea. “I’m still the same kid in a sense,” he says. “Still gazing at these instruments, like, ‘It would be cool if I could play that!’”

Asked which track he’d suggest to introduce Inner Child, he settles on Guided Anger, while giving Wonder an honorable mention for its guitar and drum interplay. Both reveal the balance at the heart of the record: chops are welcome, but never simply for their own sake.

Whether he’s choosing an eight-string, dialing back the gain or wrestling with a brutal unison line, Darson keeps returning to the same question: what does the song need?

• Inner Child is out now.

Angine de Poitrine are arguably the breakout band of 2026. Since their otherworldly KEXP session went viral, guitarist Khn de Poitrine and drummer Klek de Poitrine have set the guitar world into a microtonal-guitar-meets-prog-rock frenzy.

The mavericks have now gained the support of fellow Canadians and prog legends Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee, who have recently spoken about the Québécois phenomenon.

“Well, I think they're fantastic,” Lee told Chile’s Radio Futuro in a recent interview. “I love the fact that they've gone viral, because they're so unusual, peculiar, idiosyncratic.

“It's a sound that no-one's heard before. They've taken Primus and a bit of Rush and all the complexities and sort of boiled it down to a two-piece band using an incredible array of technology.”

Lee went as far as to say that Angine de Poitrine’s repertoire is the “most entertaining and exhilarating bits of music that I've heard for a long, long time.

“And I think most people that hear them find it somehow infectious, and I don't mean that like it's poisonous. I mean good infectious.”

Lifeson also chipped in, calling their arrangements and songwriting “hypnotic.

“You know, using the looping pedals to create a bassline, and then guitar lines over it, and keep building on it,” he pointed out.

“And above all, they're just great players. They really play their instruments so well, and that whole microtonal approach just makes it sound so exotic, and just mesmerizing.”

“And the drummer has a bigger nose than me, so I love it,” Lee quipped.

Other recent Angine de Poitrine disciples include Animals as Leaders’ Tosin Abasi, who recently had the privilege of wielding Khn’s microtonal double-neck guitar/bass, as documented by Willow Smith.

The two guitarists recently attended an Angine de Poitrine gig, and Abasi couldn’t help but lay his hands on what’s already proving to be quite the legendary guitar.

As for the rest of us, well, it seems like a signature may or may not be in the works – at least according to CEO Simon Godin.

“I’m speaking with their team,” he told Guitar World. “It’s not a yes or a no. Everything went very big, very fast, and now this is the instrument they’ve dreamed of.

“Maybe this is why, for now, they want to keep it unique. If we do make a signature version, it won’t be a big production. It will be more of a collectible item that you hang on your wall.”

Not content with merely reinventing technical guitar playing with Animals as Leaders, Tosin Abasi has also ended up changing the face of the instrument itself.

His own brand, Abasi Concepts, has staked new territory with its bold reimaginings of extended-range electric guitars via its Larada and Emi outlines. But the virtuoso has also collaborated with Ernie Ball Music Man on the angular chic of the Kaizen, and now with Cordoba for the Abasi Stage 7 – his long-awaited, groundbreaking ergonomic nylon-string design.

But, as he told Guitar World during a Q&A on his new Cordoba acoustic at NAMM 2026, he had no intention of ever designing instruments. It was necessity – namely the shortage of quality extended-range guitars – that ultimately forced his hand.

“It was never really part of the plan,” he says. “But once you start playing eight-string guitar, especially if we go back 10-15 years, you didn’t really have options. I cut my teeth on the design aspect by having to commission these custom-built guitars, and it really forced me to think about what was important to have in an extended-range instrument, and what wasn't.

“There’s a lot of extended range guitars that basically take an existing six-string and just add strings, and I don’t think that hits the mark, as far as how comfortable and playable these instruments can be.”

Although he’s always had an interest in fashion and design, Abasi has been surprised by the impact he’s had on the industry – something that was perhaps best exemplified last month when his former flame Ibanez dropped its ergonomic new Alpha Series.

Fans – and Abasi’s own bandmate – were quick to point out its similarities to the AAL leader’s efforts. As he says, with a twinkle in his eye, “At this point, we’re even being emulated by other companies…” Imitation, of course, being the sincerest form of flattery.

It’s a mark of how far Abasi has come as a designer, especially as creating guitars has taken on a whole new meaning for the guitarist. It’s no longer just a means to an end. It’s a way to fulfil the musical ambitions of a new generation of players. And he feels like a proud parent.

“There's almost a paternal quality to making an instrument for another musician. It's one thing to make music that people consume. It's another thing to make instruments that other musicians use to make their music.

“There's a totally different relationship when it comes to making instruments, because your guitars go out into the world, and then you see someone producing their own music on it. It's a sense of pride or something.”

You can watch the full Q&A with Tosin Abasi, in which he details the design process for the Cordoba Abasi Stage 7, as well as his classical guitar and design journey, above.

Ibanez’s all-new electric guitar model, the Alpha, is gunning for the currently bustling progressive and metal guitar markets.

Yet one of the scene’s biggest players, Javier Reyes of Animals as Leaders, has taken issue with the design, as comparisons to two other guitars – both designed in collaboration with his bandmate, Tosin Abasi – intensify.

Available exclusively in seven-string and eight-string formats, the Alpha seemingly continues where their signature guitar collaboration that never was with Abasi left off. Abasi spent many years as an Ibanez artist before launching his own brand, Abasi Concepts, in 2017.

Some on social media are claiming they assumed the Alpha was a new Abasi Concepts design and there appear to be some notable similarities between the lower horn and cutaway bottom of the Alpha’s silhouette and those of Abasi’s Larada model.

Then there’s the Kaizen, which Abasi built in partnership with Ernie Ball, and appears to have offered some influence on the top horn side of the Alpha body shape.

Indeed, if you simply splice together the top of the Kaizen and the bottom of the Larada in Photoshop, you get a result remarkably similar to the Alpha’s outline...

That’s all seemingly prompted Abasi’s co-guitarist Reyes to comment a thumbs down emoji in response to Ibanez’s Instagram post launching the guitar, before asking, “What’s Japanese for shameless?”

When pressed for more from other Instagram users, Reyes responded: “I’m just another Yelp reviewer like you. I respect and appreciate your opinion, like my band members' contributions to my life. But be smarter. If you can’t discern that [the designs are very similar]. That’s not on me. You should be smarter, or don’t be a Yelp reviewer.”

Yelp ratings aside, the fact that the Alpha was launched on Tosin Abasi’s birthday was also not lost on some of his fans.

However, other commenters on Ibanez’s post have rightly pointed out how shape copying is no new fad in guitar design. Strat and Tele shapes are incredibly commonplace because, legally speaking, those guitar designs have been deemed generic.

It’s a slightly different story for V- and Z-shaped guitars, with Gibson winning its trademark dispute with Dean, as it successfully argued that those shapes were its intellectual property.

The Alpha, meanwhile, creates a new outline, albeit by splicing two shapes together and tweaking them slightly, which is fairly common practice.

Time (and, we imagine, some IP lawyers) will tell if that’s enough for Ibanez to avoid breaching patents or trademarks held by either Abasi Concepts or Ernie Ball, but it seems unlikely the firm would not have investigated such a possibility prior to the launch.

At the time of writing, Abasi has not issued a response to Ibanez’s first big launch of 2026. His last Instagram post was from the day of the drop, celebrating his 43rd birthday.

In a recent interview, however, he teased the future of Abasi Concepts, with the guitarist set to expand his roster of electric guitars and pedals in new ways.

Meanwhile, we suspect the debate about whether the guitar's design cuts too close to the bone of Abasi's standout designs will continue to divide opinion.

• Guitar World reached out to Ibanez, Ernie Ball, and representatives for Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes for their response, but had not received comment at the time of publication.

As the creative powerhouse behind both Animals as Leaders and Abasi Concept, Tosin Abasi has helped to redefine the contemporary guitar landscape.

As the CEO of Abasi Concepts, he's continuing to push the boundaries of what a guitar can sound and look like. Naturally, with the brand recently expanding its wares to pedals, any tone conversation nowadays would be remiss not to include amp modelers and plugins.

“Abasi Concepts was always meant to be an umbrella encompassing more than just guitar design,” Abasi tells Premier Guitar.

“We’re interested in solutions across the board. And part of the fun of having the company is that we get to manifest the things we wish existed.

Abasi also has a high-profile collaboration with Neural DSP in the form of the Archetype: Abasi plugin suite, which in turn could influence some of Abasi Concepts' own output in the future.

“We’d love to have an offering in each of those spaces,” he teases. “Software is a territory that we have not really stepped into yet, but it is clearly of such utility that it would make sense.

“But Ivan [Chopik, Abasi Concepts COO] and I are both big fans of tube amplifiers,” Abasi admits. “There’s no substitute for playing an amp in a room. So the amp thing has been a conversation.”

In a Guitar World interview earlier this year, Abasi shared his thoughts on amp modelers – explaining that, for him, it’s very much “a [case-by-case] scenario depending on the gig.

“There are times I will use modelers, and there are fantastic companies like Neural DSP [who make them],” he divulges. “They cloned my tube rig and it's shocking [how good it is]. Our feeling is that modelers are basically perfect, especially at the end of the chain, when you're hearing a mixed record or a mixed band.

“But there's nothing that defeats the experience of plugging into an amp and a cab in the room. And it's not knocking modelers, it's just saying there's literally physical differences between how the sound is being produced. So for me, it's like a love of both, right? It's like, I still like engines but [electric vehicles] have their place.”

Abasi’s band, Animals as Leaders, has just been announced as the sole support act for the SatchVai Band’s maiden U.S. tour.

Joe Satriani and Steve Vai's maiden European tour as the SatchVai Band this past June and July was a milestone moment for the guitar world.

Now, the two are bringing their band to the States for a new leg of the aptly-titled Surfing with the Hydra tour in April and May 2026, with Animals as Leaders as support on all dates.

Speaking about the two’s first-ever collaborative States-wide tour, Vai says, “The SatchVai Band summer Euro tour of 2025 far exceeded anything I could have imagined. Joe and I struck pure jammin’ gold night after night.

“Being in the same band with Joe, playing songs we actually wrote together on stage, in real time, felt like watching a childhood fantasy step out of my teenage brain and stroll onto the stage. And somehow, it was even more rewarding, satisfying, and downright fulfilling than I ever thought possible.”

Alongside Satriani and Vai, the lineup is rounded out by drummer Kenny Aronoff, bassist Marco Mendoza, and guitarist Pete Thorn. They will not only be performing the collaborative releases the duo have put out so far, but also new material from a forthcoming Satch/Vai album and favorites from the pair’s prolific catalog.

Pre-sale tickets for the tour have just kicked off today with an Artist Presale, followed by local pre-sales tomorrow (December 11) and public on-sales on December 12.

For more information, head to the SatchVai Band's official website.

Earlier this year, the electric guitar titans released their sophomore collaborative single, the ’70s-flavored I Wanna Play My Guitar, with Glenn Hughes on vocals, which continued to tease what fans can expect from their upcoming album.

What is it?

It's safe to say Tosin Abasi is already one of this century's key progressive players. This is someone who has made his name through pushing the boundaries of the electric guitar. Thumping, tapping, performing impossibly dextrous clean fingerstyle passages, shredding like a man possessed, and churning out brain-breaking low-register metal riffs, Abasi has spent the last two decades rightly hailed as one of the geniuses of modern guitar.

Such a player requires a special instrument, and Abasi’s latest weapon of choice is the Kaizen, developed with American legends Music Man.

A bold offset design, all angles and points; with fanned frets for balanced tension, plus proprietary pickups and custom shop build quality, in a range of vivid colors. As you can imagine, it’s not a cheap electric guitar - but can those principles be adapted into an instrument that more of us can afford?

That’s the question today, with the new Sterling by Music Man adaptation of the Kaizen. Music Man’s sub-brand needs no introduction, having a lengthy track record of high-quality mid-range guitars and basses; this latest addition to the range will be welcomed by Abasi fans, as well as anyone else exploring the forms that a modern electric guitar can take.

In particular, I’ve got my hands on the seven-string variant, likely to be of particular interest to the target audience.

Specs

• Price: $899/£1,099/€1,229
• Made: Indonesia
• Type: Seven-string electric guitar
• Body: Nyatoh
• Neck: Roasted maple
• Fingerboard/radius: Rosewood, 15.75"
• Scale length: 25.5"/648mm
• Nut/width: Plastic/49.5mm
• Frets: 24
• Hardware: Steinberger Gearless tuners, Sterling two-point vibrato, black finish
• String spacing at bridge: 10.8mm
• Electrics: 2x Sterling by Music Man uncovered ceramic humbuckers, volume, tone, 3-way toggle
• Weight: 6lb/2.7kg
• Options: Kaizen 6-string, $849/£999
• Left-handed: No
• Finishes: Firemist Purple Satin (as reviewed), Stealth Black
• Cases: None included
• Contact: Sterling By Music Man

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

Only two colors are offered - it’s this Firemist Purple Satin, Stealth Black, or nothing; even the purple is a subdued shade that rather downplays the Kaizen’s dramatic shape.

Some glossier, more unapologetic finishes might do wonders for the aesthetics, as it could be argued that this model looks a little undercooked as is. There were a couple of small finish flaws on our review example, too.

The build underneath is not to be sniffed at, though; a smooth, attractively-grained roasted maple neck and well-fretted rosewood fingerboard mated to a lightweight nyatoh body.

The Sterling Kaizen ditches the fanned frets of the USA model, but it’s a comfortable and ergonomic experience that should cater even to those unfamiliar with seven-string guitars.

The USA-built Kaizen’s Steinberger gearless tuners do make their way over here - a plus from functional and aesthetic perspectives alike. It gives the headstock a streamlined, futuristic aesthetic with no buttons poking out from the sides, while the machines themselves are silky-smooth in action. At the other end sits Sterling’s tried-and-tested two-point vibrato.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★½

The body might look strange, but the shape sits comfortably and balances well thanks to the long top horn. The neck is slim and subtly rounded, feeling hardly bigger than the average six-string neck despite actually having a slightly above-average seven-string nut width. The vibrato is smooth and expressive, holding tuning well.

On a seven-string guitar, the standard 25.5" scale length can feel like a compromise, not allowing the low B string the tightness it truly needs, but engineering in fanned frets would add hundreds to this guitar's price tag.

Overall, the Kaizen plays superbly and encourages you to put your best foot forward technically; it’s Tosin Abasi’s guitar, after all.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

Tonally, we’ve two unbranded ceramic humbuckers described as “focused, with an aggressive midrange bite”.

In theory then, ideal for modern metal guitar sounds – especially with extended range, where low frequencies must be tightly controlled. No doubt Sterling by Music Man suspects many buyers will swap straight over to their own choice of esoteric seven-string pickup, maybe even Abasi’s own signature Fishman Fluence set - but let’s give these stock units a fair shake.

Encouragingly, the humbuckers immediately make good on their ‘focused’ brief – there’s decent attenuation of boomy lows, and plenty of punchy midrange to cut through a mix.

Some extreme tone-chasers will still wish for a sharper and more cutting sound, but there’s no lack of good qualities here. It also doesn’t push a cleaner signal into undue breakup, important for those seeking to emulate the frequently clean-toned Abasi on a budget.

Not the most inspiring lower-gain voice, but perfectly usable. Tonally, it certainly stands up to other comparable seven-strings, and the slinky playing experience only enhances the enjoyment.

Verdict

Sterling's take on the Kaizen, necessarily, has to dispense with such niceties as the fanned frets and the custom pickups, but what's left is still distinctive and bears the hallmarks of a guitar that has been thought through very well.

You might want new pickups, and the aesthetics aren't up there with the show-stopping USA model, but the playability and ergonomics of this entry point to the Kaizen model leave many rivals in the dust.

Guitar World verdict: It might not have the full complement of features that define the USA Kaizen, but this Sterling model takes the basic design ethos and morphs it into a very well-executed mid-range model. Scoring especially highly for its superb ergonomics, it ought to appeal to those seeking a highly playable seven-string.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Ernie Ball

SevenstringTV

• “A must-try for fans of guitars that push the boundaries of instrument design”: Sterling by Music Man St. Vincent Goldie review

After first announcing its arrival in January, Sterling by Music Man has finally launched a more accessible version of the highly acclaimed, Tosin Abasi-designed Kaizen model.

Back at NAMM 2022, the Animals As Leaders guitarist surprised-announced that he had partnered with Ernie Ball Music Man to design the Kaizen – a futuristic electric guitar that introduced a new body shape and offered a range of cutting-edge specs geared towards contemporary players.

It first arrived solely as a seven-string guitar, but a year later, it was introduced as a six-string. Both models, however, came with multi-scale designs that – while in keeping with the forward-thinking design approach of the Kaizen itself – distanced itself from regular players. That, as well as the $3,999 price tag.

In the ensuing years, guitar fans have been asking for a Sterling by Music Man Kaizen spin-off, one that would bring the design to a lower price point while also offering a platform for more conventionally inclined players.

Now, Abasi and Sterling by Music Man have responded, launching regular-scaled six– and seven-string formats that make “the forward-thinking design more accessible than ever”.

“I want the guitar to play fast, I want it to wear close to the body, and I want it to communicate a degree of aggression and forward-thinking – and I think the Kaizen really embodies that,” Abasi notes of the release.

“There’s a foundational shape to the Kaizen that’s really bold and impactful, but it doesn’t depart too far from what a guitar should look like. I like when the form is informed by the function.”

As such, the Sterling Kaizen – which slashes more than $3k off the original’s price tag – follows the cues of its source material, with a radical double-cut body built from nyatoh.

It’s joined by a roasted maple – topped with 24 frets – as well as a rosewood fingerboard, Steinberger gearless tuners, a Modern tremolo, and a 25.5” scale length.

There are, as you may expect, a few cost-cutting measures baked-in to the spec. Price-slashing efforts include regular ceramic humbuckers – as opposed to the high-end Heat Treated pickups found in the OG – as well as the 15.75" radius, which is drafted in over the innovative Infinity radius from the previous model.

Nonetheless, the essential spirit – or at least the shape – of the Kaizen seems intact.

“We needed to retain some things from the Music Man model because they’re quintessential to how the guitar plays and feels,” explains Abasi. “And we changed some things that we thought would actually be beneficial. This was an opportunity to give people an option, and I think we really hit a sweet spot.”

The Sterling by Music Man Kaizen is available in Firemist Purple Satin or Stealth Black, and is available for $849 or $899 depending on its string configuration.

Head over to Sterling by Music Man to find out more.

Digital modeling pros Neural DSP love a creative publicity stunt, and they’re no strangers to pairing hotshot shredders together, locking them in a room, and seeing if they can write a song in 24 hours.

We’ve already seen Plini working with ex-Megadeth man Kiko Loureiro and Mateus Asato, and producing magic, but seeing him team up with Animals As Leaders’ madcap genius Tosin Abasi feels like a dream collaboration.

In a surprise to no one, Plini opts for his signature “ridiculous space-age looking” Strandberg, and Abasi his self-made Abasi Concepts Larada, a guitar that Justus West snuck onto Beyoncé's new album.

Straight off the bat, Abasi stumbles upon a selective picking idea that leads Plini to point at him, a lightbulb pinging in his mind, to say, “Does that exist?! Okay, good.”

As they develop the idea, Plini laughs, “This is a part you’ll play, isn’t it?” The Aussie experimented with the technique on his latest EP, Mirage – which fittingly, features a guest solo from Abasi – but he’s regularly professed to being an amateur with it, especially compared to the man who coined it.

Where he excels, however, is with his emotion-draped chord progressions. In fact, he’s the one in charge of giving the song its core progression, and it’s as dreamy as they come. It's fascinating seeing the pair dissect the progression, trading chords for different feels with, at one point, Abasi taking on an almost directorial role.

The pair also show a keen ear for dynamic detail, with Abasi swapping from alternate picking to pure down picking à la James Hetfield for a more “metal” and attack-y approach.

“I rarely do straight down strokes,” Abasi confessed. “I haven't played Metallica in a while.”

As with any strong songwriting partnership, there are also disagreements. While penning the second section – an ascending chordal run that finds Abasi fingerpicking and Plini on lead – Abasi pushes for “a consonant in resolution” before any curveballs are thrown. Plini counters with, “You think, not just straight curveballs?” – a smile across his face the whole time.

Plini’s talents are properly tested when Abasi switches to a thumping part on his eight-string, leaving space for Plini to dive into a selective picking concept.

“Fucking hell,” he exclaims after fumbling his line. “Why do you write things like this?”

The idea is to syncopate the thump with the selective picking, but in a quest to make the Aussie’s part more personable to him, he’s put out of his misery.

“You were about to do a single note thing,” Abasi ponders as Plini battles with the part. “I wonder if it's a better use of Plini to do that,” he says, “and have the loop do a distorted version of the arpeggio,” which is then dialed in on the Archetype: Abasi plugin.

It goes to show that even the world’s best players have humanizing moments – although it seems Abasi comes away from their day’s writing pretty unscathed.

Elsewhere, there are crunchy, octaver-infused chord progressions “that sit right on the balance of an obvious and not obvious,” with Plini having stolen the octaver pedal for Gojira's signature plugin for his reprised edition, Plini X.

Abasi dishes out a key lesson that “sometimes, what a part needs is the most obvious thing,” leading Plini to quip, “Have you heard your music?” And there's also a charming moment as they nail down a harmonized lead line that has Plini musing, “Is this what it's like to be in band?”

The video offers a candid insight into how the two generational talents approach their respective instruments and songwriting processes. And, considering their tight-knit friendship and status as two of the most innovative guitarists born this side of Eddie Van Halen, it seems incredible that this represents one of their only collaborations together.

In other Tosin Abasi news, the trailblazing guitarist and entrepreneur recently released his first signature compressor pedal, the Micro-Aggressor.

Tosin Abasi is one of the 21st century’s most prolific electric guitar innovators. From reinventing ergonomic eight-string design by launching his Abasi Concepts brand to pushing the boundaries of progressive metal through his work with Animals As Leaders, the guitar virtuoso/designer has always been a key figure in the world of heavy music.

However, back in 2022, Abasi teased he was tempted to take a temporary hiatus from heavy music, after he decided to go down the blues rabbit hole and buy virtual lessons from Oz Noy, Josh Smith and even Joe Bonamassa.

At the time, he said he had “flirted with the idea of doing a blues album”, but almost three years on, and there’s been no sign that any such thing will actually happen.

Naturally, when we caught up with Abasi at NAMM 2025 to discuss all things Abasi Concepts, we couldn’t help but sneak in a question about new music he was working on – and that included asking for an update on his elusive blues record.

“This is funny,” Abasi laughs when reminded of his blues promise, “because Ivan [Chopik, Abasi Concepts COO] is a fantastic blues guitarist, and I’d never really gotten into the genre. And there's amazing players like Josh Smith and Eric Gales that I’m like, ‘Okay, I've been missing out.’

“So I had a moment over the pandemic, where I was like, ‘I’m learning the blues,’ and I got really into it, and I said I’d do an album.”

However, the idea of doing a blues album has slightly lost its appeal to Abasi – not because he doesn’t enjoy the genre, but because he respects it too much.

“I gotta respect the art,” he reflects, “and I don't know that I've evolved to the point where I can [do it justice], you know what I mean? But it's fun. It's fun to mess around with.”

It’s certainly an unfortunate update, especially when one considers just how tasteful Abasi’s blues chops are. While studying the genre, he posted a few clips online (see above) and we can’t help but feel we need Abasi to rip through some more blues shuffles on his Abasi Concepts Larada.

Those hoping for new Animals As Leaders music, though, do not fear: Abasi might not be working on his debut blues turn-out any time soon, but he is certainly planning to get the next AAL written and wrapped up as soon as possible.

“We are about to begin pre-production on an album,” Abasi confirms. “We do have some touring – we're headed to Europe in a few weeks – but I want to spend a portion of this year writing the record. In a perfect world, it'll be written and recorded by the end of this year.”

The full interview with Tosin Abasi will be published to the Guitar World website and YouTube channel in the coming weeks.

This interview with Tosin Abasi was first published in Guitar World in 2014.

The Animals As Leaders guitarist has quickly risen to the top of the new school of virtuoso players… and he used to shovel dog poop for a living. But what Guitar World readers really want to know is…

Where does your impeccable fashion sense come from? Some of your outfits are out of this world. – William Best

“[laughs] Well, I go on fashion blogs like the Sartorialist or FaceHunter, and look at a lot of street fashion. My brother is actually a fashion designer and he’s influenced me. I had a girlfriend for close to 10 years, and she was a huge influence on me, too.

“I don’t really separate things. I love music and I love aesthetic art as well. I feel like there’s a thread between visual art and music. Sometimes a designer can give me a similar feeling and impact me as strongly as hearing a really cool song or a really great guitar player.”

I am currently a freshman enrolled in a Jazz Studies Associates Degree program at Berklee College of Music. But I am debating switching to Atlanta Institute of Music because of the significant costs of Berklee. As a graduate of AIM, I was wondering if you could explain what you feel are the advantages of that program. – John Karkosiak

“It’s hard for me to speak in contrast, because I didn’t go to Berklee. But I chose AIM partially because I didn’t want to take any other core subjects, like history, math, or any of that. I just wanted to focus on music.

“AIM is good for that because it’s a condensed curriculum focused on music, and you can complete the curriculum in one year. And I didn’t want to spend four years without touring or gigging. So if you want to get a really condensed, concentrated musical education without being out of the scene for a few years, and save money, I think AIM is perfect.”

Was there ever a defining moment in your life where you felt like you had “arrived” as a musician? – David White-Goode

“Man, I’d say meeting Steve Vai and having him express liking my music. That was pretty… [pauses] I mean, I used to play his signature guitar! This is a guy that basically spearheaded the genre that I’m participating in.

“Just as a person, he’s got this guru vibe. The Guitar World cover that I was on with Steve [September 2012] was a big deal, too. And getting a signature Ibanez guitar is ridiculous. Those three instances have been, like, ‘Oh, this is a real thing!’”

I’ve been a six-string player since I learned guitar five years ago, but now I’m interested in expanding my sound. What advice would you give on how to transition to seven- and eight-string guitars? – Toby Schlitz

“I recommend getting a seven-string first and working on things like octave identification and recognizing patterns on the fretboard. This will help you better integrate the extra string.

“Another cool thing is to practice six-string material while avoiding the seventh string; then, once you’re comfortable, start writing material that incorporates the seventh string. This way, you’ll get used to knowing that extra string is there, and when you start writing your own material, it’ll be coming from an intuitive place.

“You should also learn seven-string music by other musicians and take chord voicings for six-strings and translate and revoice them on the seven-string.”

When you were younger, were you better at hand-eye coordination than other kids, like with video games, sports, and so on? Just curious, because there always seems to be something that separates a prodigy from the average player. – Jon Dallaire

“I don’t know that I was better than at sports than other kids. I mean, I was decent at some sports, like baseball, soccer, football, and hockey, but I just played them for fun. I was actually more into visual art. I would illustrate a lot and do comic books and stuff like that. That was my first creative outlet before guitar, and I guess that’s hand-eye coordination.”

In an interview a short while ago, you mentioned that you practiced yoga. How strongly has that practice affected you as a guitar player? – Broken_Hyren

“I think yoga is amazing. I also practice transcendental meditation. Both those things help to center you. So when you’re thinking about creativity, it comes from a source – an inner source. When you’re meditating, you’re bringing your consciousness to that centered source of creativity and intelligence. I think it’s reinforced my creativity. And even physically, it’s helped my response time and reflexes.

“Being centered and aligned allows you to execute anything physical more proficiently. I still do both yoga and mediation, and I think they’re super beneficial whether you play guitar or not.”

You often talk about how transcendental mediation can jump-start creativity. I’m wondering if you explore any other methods, like smoking herb? – Hong Bit

“[laughs] I have experimented with various substances. Smoking a little weed can definitely get the creative juices flowing. But I don’t know if I’d tell other people to go out and do that. Everyone has their own method, but I think meditation is something that will benefit you holistically. It doesn’t take away from your body; it actually reinforces you. In my opinion, it’s the best way to tap into creativity.”

You’ve been on the cover of Guitar World twice, and you’re always being hailed as one of the greatest new guitarists out there. Does that kind of attention cause you to feel extra pressure? Does it bother you, or maybe motivate you? – Frank Harris

“It’s starting to get a little bit weird, actually. And I’m sure there will be the inevitable negative backlash that comes along. Yeah, it means that if I pick up a guitar in front of someone who knows me, I’d better sound like one of the best guitar players on the planet. [laughs]

“It’s kinda stressful, man! I really appreciate the positive reinforcement, but I think there are so many other super-talented, under-recognized guitar players out there. So for me to be so prevalently appreciated, I think I can start to feel guilty and kinda pressured. But I guess it’s a good problem to have.”

What did you do for a living before Animals As Leaders? And do you still have to work a day job when you’re off tour? – Buddy “Victory Boy” Yarnall

“Dude, when I was going to the Atlanta Institute of Music, I worked at a dog kennel. It was a boarding facility, and I was cleaning up shit and piss in a concrete room with 40 dogs barking at me at the top of their lungs. [laughs] I also worked at a fish cannery in Alaska, where I processed salmon for, like, 16 hours a day. That’s actually how I saved up to buy my Steve Vai guitar.

“I’ve worked in coffee shops. I’ve done a lot of odd jobs. But now I just play guitar for a living. Between the clinics, tours, and lessons, I make enough money to get by.”

Have you ever consider putting vocals in Animals As Leaders? Not saying you need to. I think your sound is awesome. Just wondering. Can you sing at all? – Russell Davis

“I do not sing. [laughs] And vocals? I don’t think so. We like that it’s an instrumental band. But maybe future projects would involve me working with a vocalist.”

I’d love to get some tips on how you structure your practice routine. Do you separate your practice into sections, such as technique, composition, etc.? – Max Liebenberg

“I think it’s a good idea to section your practice sessions. I’ve been playing for 18 years, so my routines have changed. But I used to always warm up to a metronome while doing alternate-picking exercises, then maybe legato exercise and string-skipping exercises.

“Then, I’d spend 20 to 30 minutes reading music. Then I would usually pop in an instructional video and work on something that was cool from the video. But I’d say metronome-based practice is about as structured as I get these days.”

Thall is one of metal’s newest, darkest and most inventive movements. From Sleep Token and Spiritbox to Animals As Leaders – check out Red Miso for a savage centerpiece – the sound is now spreading into mainstream metal.

It’s full of weird tunings, robotic techniques and a dichotomy between crushing distortions and frosted clean tones. But what are the mechanics at the heart of this fast-rising sound?

What is thall?

Vildhjarta guitarist Calle Thomér describes thall as “djent’s colder younger brother.” Both movements grew out of a love for Meshuggah, with thall emphasizing evil atmospherics and a wider, more nuanced sonic spectrum.

There are two core components to the sound: melancholic cleans and winding, seemingly random riffs that meld together neck-breaking chugs with swarms of intricate hooks and banshee-esque noises.

Like djent, it builds on easy-to-follow 4/4 drum beats – typically at spacious slower tempos – with riffs placed over the top that are anything but. They’re overloaded with quick-fire motifs and bursts of melody that will repeat in different ways, broken up by laser-tight syncopation for an angular but memorable aural assault.

Origins of thall

Alongside Meshuggah’s influence, Korn’s penchant for high-low riffs is a core impactor, with both sounds mutated into Vildhjarta’s debut album, Måsstaden.

Founding guitarist Daniel Bergström and 15-year veteran Thomér wanted to oppose djent’s poppier elements by crafting a more nightmarish world while playing discordant high notes against low-tuned aggression.

Importantly, they retained the spasmodic grooves and chugging violence of djent as core ingredients, which is why the two movements will forever be intertwined.

Who are the biggest thall bands?

Vildhjarta are thall’s forefathers, and still its biggest band. They take the machine-like riffs of Meshuggah but add greater intricacies into their grooves. There’s also an extra coldness via ambient clean guitars that sound like cutting winds in a graveyard – a quirk most thall bands draw from. Those elements have continued to evolve with their later releases.

Humanity’s Last Breath (HLB), the brainchild of Buster Odeholm, blends thall’s slow-motion violence with deathcore’s viscerality. With an emphasis on polyrhythms, gut-wrenchingly low guitars, and acres of space for their heavy emotions to weigh the listener down, they deliver brutal walls of sound on every song.

Nebraska’s Catsclaw are making waves with frenetic, almost-hardcore energy icing their thall contructions. Finland’s Indistinct and Wisconsin guitarist Olympus Lenticular offer accessible takes on the sound, while Mirar lurks on thall’s darkest, most extreme fringes.

Creepy Cleans

There’s an element of horror tropes to thall; when creepy cleans chime in, you know something far more gruesome is just around the corner.

Thomér says these riffs, typically arriving with other instrumentation, create a spacious but threatening ambiance that accounts for “more than 50% of the sound. The parts are minimal; it's letting the delay do the work rather than picking lots of notes.”

In terms of tones, he adds that you “just need a clean signal with a little reverb and delay. It's more in the actual notes and how it's played than the gear. And just go straight for feel, rather than melody.” Although, stealing a trick from Tesseract, removing the cab sim when using plugins or modelers can make those clean tones even more chilling.

Thall riffs

After cleans have set the mood, it’s time to get heavy. Importantly, those cold cleans typically continue underneath the riffs – another reason to focus on minimalism and feel.

Thomér explains: “What I do is put down a 4/4 drumbeat and riff until I can hear a cool hook, and start progressing with that idea. I always think my riffs suck in the beginning, so I have to keep on polishing them – that’s how I end up with tonnes of intricacies.”

Writing thall riffs is a meticulous process that taps into the benefits of bedroom recording over jamming in a room with other musicians. It’s less about nailing full takes as it is piecing motifs and disgusting noises together – pick scrapes, whammy pedal squeals and harmonics.

As Thomér says, “It’s like building a puzzle more than writing a riff. You can’t really write this kind of music in the studio. You have to do it at home. I can’t remember the last time I recorded a take that was longer than two or three bars.”

Low and slow 

With thall bands usually down-tuning to disgusting depths, Youtuber and guitarist Nik Nocturnal feels slowing pace is a necessity.

“The lower the tuning, the more groove is involved – the faster you play, the muddier it gets,” he says. “So everything should be more spacious. And all that space combined with modern production elements, and the intricacies of the riffs, are what makes it so heavy.”

That cavernous space, he adds, allows for the drums to be extra weird, playing against the riffs.

“Vildhjarta’s drums kind of go against the groove – it’s wild. That realm is very technical, but it has this extra level of heaviness because of how things are rhythmically accented with the guitars. It sounds futuristic.”

Robotic tightness

Like in djent, Thomér stresses that “tightness is extremely important.” He continues: “I do so many retakes when tracking it’s ridiculous. I double-track my guitars with the same tone left and right. I want it to be so tight it sounds like mono.”

That quest for tightness is also why you won’t see Thomér using vibrato. He believes that stripping what is a very personable technique from his music helps glaze his riffs with an extra coldness. “I try to mimic robots playing guitar,” he says. “it’s supposed to sound like a machine.”

High notes

“Going from really low notes to really high notes is like a breath of fresh air,” Thomér believes, emphasizing his band’s desire to use “the full spectrum of notes.” These higher parts are typically played across two strings, with the notes a semitone apart.

HLB tune those strings a semitone apart to make fretting the diads easier. They’re essential to the coldness of thall – see Mirar's Dégenèse for a seismic example of those opposites in action.

Extending the fretboard 

Thomér says he “thinks horizontally instead of vertically, so 90% of the time I’m using the two thickest strings. I like the timbre of them, especially high up on the neck. When you pick the 24th fret on the lowest string and bend it, that can be a really satisfying sound.”

That’s led to Thomér collaborating with Arizona’s EIR guitars on a custom 28” baritone six-string with 27 frets. For Thomér, “those extra three frets changed how I write music. I utilize them in almost every riff I write.”

An extension of the horizontal outlook sees him thoroughly abusing the pitch-shifting abilities of his DigiTech Whammy DT. It opens up more of the fretboard, avoiding the need to play a higher note on a thinner string, and extending the lower range of the guitar.

The feature may only be used for one or two notes at a time, so MIDI automation is a key assistant here.

Tunings

Having used seven and eight strings previously, Vildhjarta have been utilizing baritones more recently, as “they're easier to play” and are typically tuned to E1-C2-F2-A#2-D#2-G#3 – a standard tuning, save the lowest string dropping one-and-a-half tones.

HLB’s main tuning – E1-B1-E2-A2-Ab3-A3 – is a take on another standard, albeit an octave lower. The thickest two strings provide drop-tuned fretting, while the higher strings are all about ease of dissonance. Everything in between is tuned a standard fifth, apart from the next string, so it’s not a world away from familiar tunings.

Odenholm is left-handed but plays a right-handed guitar strung upside down, so the thickest strings are at the bottom. His downstrokes therefore equate to upstrokes for most players, so when he rakes chords the last note to sound is the dominant.

Tones

Vildhjarata remains loyal to Line 6's Pod XT modeler and its Big Bottom amp mode, which was the sound of their favorite Meshuggah record, Catch 33. Their guitars naturally offer a lot of low-end and high mids, so they seek to EQ out some of the harsher scratchy sounds. They’ll use a boost pedal to push the mids further accentuating the clickiness of the tone.

Their gain usually just sneaks past the halfway point, with the bass rolled off, the mids and trebles cranked, and presence at midrange. A compressor is typically set to offer a slow attack and fast release.

Odenholm also has several presets on Neural DSP’s Fortin Nameless Suite plugin, which are paired with PODs on HLB records.

Pickups

Lundgren pickups – popularized by Meshuggah’s Fredrik Thordendal – may be too sterile for some, but for they’re perfect for thall. That’s why you’ll see Thomér’s beastly baritone, Odeholm’s Hapas Judge 628 HLB ET and Bergström’s Ibanez Prestige RG1077XL loaded with M6s and M7s respectively.

As with djent, though, expensive gear isn’t crucial. Thall is a sonic mindset where skin-tingling cleans and growling but hook-filled riffs reign supreme. By embodying the chilling spirit of the movement, players can make even a child’s guitar thall hard as hell.

Google ‘djent’ and you’ll be hit with over 2.5 million search results. On Instagram, #djent has been used well over one billion times. So, with players pushing the boundaries of the style of guitar playing for nearly two decades, it’s safe to say that djent isn’t a passing fad.

From its origins with metal titans Meshuggah to its influence on contemporary, world-conquering acts like Sleep Token and beyond, the style’s impact on the guitar has been monumental.

So what exactly is djent? Where did it crawl out from, what makes something ‘djent’, who are its main players and what are the techniques driving one of modern metal’s most influential sub-genres? Here, with the help of some of the genre’s key players, we’ll reveal all.

What is djent?

Djent is an onomatopoeic term first coined by Meshuggah guitarist Fredrik Thordendal as a way to describe his guitar tone. Rumour has it that a few alcoholic beverages had been consumed.

“In particular, it describes the sound of a power chord with an extra fifth stacked on top,” Tesseract guitarist Acle Kahney explains. “The extra fifth is the ‘-nt’ of the djent sound. It’s adding that metallic sound when played with a tight low-end.”

Djent bands can be characterised by their watertight, high-gain guitar tones and often heavily palm-muted, odd time signature riffs which snarl over 4/4 drum beats. This particular approach creates weirdly grooving polymeters that make riffs both angular and accessible.

Where did djent come from?

Djent quickly evolved into a term to categorize the bands who draw heavily upon Meshuggah’s unique sonic template. These bands cut their teeth in online fan forums in the mid-‘00s, where guitarists like Kahney, Misha Mansoor (Periphery) and Paul Ortiz (Chimp Spanner) gushed over the Swedes’ guitar tones, traded tips for emulating those sounds and shared their own djenty jams.

“It was tone-chasing for people who couldn’t afford real amps and nice microphones,” says Kahney.

Mansoor adds: “Guitar nerds love to pursue tones and understand how people do things with commonly available gear. It was this kind of beautiful mystery. Everyone had their own way of trying to get that sound, so it evolved in different ways.”

Production gear was becoming affordable, too. The emergence of Line 6’s quirky kidney-bean shaped POD floor modeller and DAWs for the everyman were game-changers. Suddenly, your bedroom became a studio – which was vital to djent’s budget-stricken development.

Who are the biggest djent bands? 

Despite not classing themselves as djent band, Meshuggah are the movement’s undisputed forefathers. Atop Tomas Haake’s relentless drum grooves, the band’s penchant for crunching machinery guitar riffs, disorientating dissonance and Allan Holdsworth-indebted leads has helped inspire a flood of idolizing bands.

Tesseract can be viewed as a purist djent band, with polymetric riffs, glassy clean tones and Daniel Tompkins’ skyscraping clean vocal hooks sticking closely to the stylistic template born from those forums.

Self-identifying as a prog metal band, Periphery’s sonic soup is a little more widescreen. They weave in dizzying fretboard runs alongside jazz, electronic and orchestral elements into their tapestry of dislocated riffs and searing solos.

Chimp Spanner’s acrobatic instrumentals, SikTh’s maniacal chaos and After the Burial’s deathcore grunt are all fine examples of early djent.

Monuments, meanwhile, blend metalcore elements into their tight rhythmic attack. Animals as Leaders are the genre’s most successful instrumental band; Tosin Abasi colors their near-algorithmic rhythms with innovative techniques, including thumping and the rainfall-like tonality of selective picking, often via surprisingly low-gain tones.

Honorable mentions also go to The Contortionist, whose 2014 album Language is adored by the djent community; and Car Bomb’s noise-ravaged ‘stuck in a washing machine with a bag of gravel’ aesthetic.

So… is djent a genre?

It’s a discussion that’s raged on since the movement started gaining traction. The debate was immortalized in the title of Periphery’s tongue-in-cheek fifth album, Djent Is Not a Genre – but Mansoor is actually a little more pragmatic.

“Genres are usually named by the fans,” he says. “Like it or not, this style of music is called ‘djent’ and we've retroactively been named a djent band. It doesn’t bother us. If it helps you find us and other bands, then it’s doing its job.”

What are djent guitar techniques?

A strong picking hand is paramount – huge emphasis is placed on both rhythmic accuracy and tightness of sound. As Mansoor says: “You’re going to be obsessing over stamina, how you hold your pick, and how you extract the most out of your palm muting.”

While stamina will naturally come over time – it’s good to practice fast, intricate picking patterns like Meshuggah’s Bleed to build up muscle memory and hone your skills – palm-muting is equally as important.

Djent rhythms are made up of extremes; when a note is played it should be hard and aggressive, but when a note is not being played, there should be no bleeding out. Think of it like a strobe light; it is either on or off, never somewhere in between.

A lot of this is trial and error. Try adjusting how you hold your pick, the angle at which you hit the strings and where on your instrument your hand rests. Periphery’s Jake Bowen notes: “A big part of it is understanding how your playing interacts with these inanimate objects.

“I spent a lot of time with very specific pickups and string gauges to learn how it feels in my hands. Connecting with your instrument is what’s gonna push your playing over the edge.”

However, the value of the left hand should also not be overlooked. Mansoor calls it “an underrated aspect,” explaining: “It helps you get the rhythm out of a lot of those tight parts. You don’t want it be too robotic – it’s like you're playing drums on guitar, and the left hand can almost be your ghost notes.”

“If you’re low on the learning curve,” Periphery’s Mark Holcomb adds, “focus on creating silence with as little elements as possible in a high-gain context, like noise gates. Once you can perfect that, the rest comes very naturally.”

In terms of solos, there are no hard-and-fast rules except: serve the song. Tesseract prioritize texture, while Periphery aim to recreate that scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark with theirs. The choice is yours.

Polymeters 

Polymeters are when two instruments play different time signatures at the same time. The drums typically hold down a 4/4 beat, while the guitars play an odd time riff. It keeps the prog element grounded.

Kahney calls them “typewriter riffs.” He says: “You have the pattern, and then, ding! Like a typewriter, it goes back to the start.” But he emphasises that players shouldn’t overthink them.

Speaking to Total Guitar in early 2024, Kahney said players wanting to master djent should “throw traditional looping out the window, learn a phrase or pattern and learn to feel it.”

The rule of thumb is that the guitars will play in a certain set of subdivisions and loop for four or eight bars, creating a nice tidy full measure. The last loop of guitars will either cut short or extend to fit nicely into the 4/4 loop.

To number-crunch: there are 32 eighth notes in four bars of 4/4. Therefore a guitar riff in 7/8 can repeat four times, leaving a spare four eighth notes to ‘finish off’ a riff and sync back up with the drums after 32 notes.

For an easy listening exercise, check out the intro to Tesseract’s Lament and try to count or feel where the phrase loops. It’s just a little shorter than a full bar of 4/4, with a very clear slide down marking its end.

Once you recognize that loop, listen to how there’s a push-and-pull with the drum beat beneath it. The drums will remain solid, while the beat on which the one-count of loop lands will change. The push-and-pull effect is quintessential to the djent groove.

Which guitars djent best? 

Of course, it’s a matter of preference – but extended range guitars are a common weapon of choice. This is because players can benefit from a lower note range without compromising the high end, which is needed for solos and atmospherics.

When starting out, Mansoor had to order a custom seven string from “a luthier that didn’t think I was insane,” while Bowen sourced his from a “really faraway musical swap meet.” Thankfully, djent has helped popularize these instruments, hugely increasing their availability and affordability.

That being said, many djent bands still play six string guitars. Periphery’s Marigold and Scarlet are in Drop C. A number of songs like Prayer Position and The Bad Thing also employ an A G C F A D tuning, which is essentially a seven string tuning down a whole step, with the sixth string missing.

Lowness isn’t everything, though. The main riff of Bleed is a D#, half a step down from a standard sixth string. With the tightness of the attack so important, it’s essential to play a guitar that’s comfortable. You can make anything djent with the right attitude.

How do you get a djent guitar tone?

There are two key tone types in djent: rhythms and cleans. In both instances, amp modelers have proven to be far better suited than tube amps.

With clean tones, a key trick is removing the cab sim on an amp modeller. Acle Kahney first did it by accident with his POD XT, and ended up loving its “thinner, more piano-y” tonality. The sound became known as the Milton Keynes Clean, in honor of his UK hometown.

To build a clean tone like this from scratch, Kahney recommends a Fender or Roland JC120-style clean amp, minus the cab sim. Then, control the compression and EQ to cut out some of the pick attack. Reverbs and delays can be added as per your preference and help give the tone sparkle and depth.

Rhythm tones 

With rhythm tones, it’s all about high-gains without damaging tightness. Luckily, you don’t need a crazy budget to achieve this. Says Kahney: “Even with a cheap EQ pedal, if you crank the volume and cut the lows, you’ll get a fairly tight, Meshuggah-y sound.

“You’re altering the tone of the pickup before it hits the amp – getting rid of all that sludge. If it sounds too thin, you can always crank the bass up on the amp.”

It’s important not to suffocate your tone, though. Periphery’s live rig involves settings of varying tightness which allow the tone to breathe and bloom where it’s needed, only squeezing it when necessary. This can sometimes kick in mid-riff and comes via different EQ variations of the same rhythm tone.

Guitar tricks

Setting up your guitar the right way can help find that Holy Grail of tightness. Tesseract use humbuckers with split coils and are constantly jumping between different positions during songs. Experiment with your guitar to find what works best for you.

“I’ll use the neck pickup on split coil a lot,” Kahney explains. “It can give you a much twangier sound. Then I’ll EQ some of the harshness of the single coil sound out.”

String gauges and scale length also play their part, too. Longer scale-length or baritone guitars allow for thinner strings without sacrificing tuning stability, which again emphasizes the twang of the instrument.

The empowering thing about djent is that it was born from musicians trying to achieve tight, high-gain sounds on budget equipment – and succeeding. That means you don’t have to break the bank to sculpt the perfect tone. So grab whatever you have to hand, and get creative...

Joshua De La Victoria isn’t like most other prog guitarists. His feet may be planted on the borderline where math rock meets fusion’s colorgasm spectrum, but it’s his classic rock upbringing – via his parents’ love for Tom Petty and Bon Jovi – that shaped his tastes.

“Tonally, I love the classic rock stuff,” De La Victoria says. “Especially edge-of-breakup tones like a Vox AC30 kind of thing, or any kind of Friedmann amp that isn’t super metal.” 

That’s why you’ll find him playing through crystalline low-gain tones instead of cranking the distortion.   

“The crazy story is that I didn't get into prog until after I played with Matt Garstka in a covers band. He was already in Animals As Leaders – but there we were, playing the Beatles in a bar. He’d do a drum fill and I’d be like, ‘What the hell is happening?’ He opened my eyes to complex rhythmic ideas.” 

The pair soon formed their duo, Victoria, in which the Californian guitarist provides Garstka’s crazy rhythmic conceptions with a tasteful harmonic accoutrement. 

“It’s tricky turning rhythmic concepts into songs,” says Victoria, who continues on the side with his “more traditional” modern rock outfit, Portraits.

“I’m very intentionally trying to make complex music something that I would listen to. My favorite band is The 1975, which is as poppy as you can get, and that’s the place I’m coming at these songs from.

“When I have something that's rhythmically complex, that tells me that it shouldn't be harmonically overwhelming. A lot of the creativity comes from chord voicings, and then the production of the music. I try to make everything intentional rather than complex just for the sake of it.”

He adds: “I’m a big fan of hidden complexity. With Chronostasis, the whole song is built around two polyrhythms that are bouncing off of each other – but my goal is that you don't notice that until you choose to dive in deeper.”

Garstka plays a quarter-note pattern of 3-2-2-3, while Victoria plays a pattern of 4-3-3-4. “So it sounds like I’m playing fast and slowing down,” the guitarist says. “And then on top of that, I put all these moody chords.

“I’m always thinking, ‘Where can I take this rhythm to, conceptually?’ I ended up out the time with the polyrhythm, playing the middle section in straight seven, so it was no longer pushing and pulling.”

Providing the humanity to contrast Gartska’s machine-like drumming has led to an interesting method of building chords. 

“I see chords as intervals; I see their relationship with the first of the scale. So if I’m playing in A major, I have the root note; and I’ll pick other notes in the scale to make a new chord shape I’ve never played before, so maybe I-V-VI-XI.

”Then I’ll use voice-leading to change by moving the least amount of notes possible. I don’t like to use memorized shapes in writing mode.”

Victoria’s guitar collection is ever-growing, but you’ll never see two of the same guitar on on his wall. 

“I know that there are people that want the same guitar over and over, or they like a certain neck so they want it on everything. But I’d rather just play that one guitar. I intentionally spec each guitar differently.” 

That, he explains, is how he unlocks different ways of playing from within him.

His main instrument is a Solana Vintage Modern, a Strat-style model from California’s Iconic Guitars. Its body shape, scale length and sound is where he finds himself “at home” – although a notable departure from the Fender template comes via its bridge humbucker.

“For the first 10 years of playing I was a single-coil guy, but I never used the bridge on a Strat; it was way too bright,” he reveals. “I would nearly always play the neck. Getting a humbucker opened up all these different tones and made the Strat more versatile for me.”

An Iconic Tamarack is his preferred Tele-style model, while an Abasi Space-T provides a contemporary twist. The Tamarack’s bright and strong single coils and quick attack mean he often finds himself playing “16th note staccato patterns” on the guitar more than anything else.

Victoria calls his eight-string, Fishman Fluence-loaded Abasi Larada Legion a “futuristic machine,” feeling that it excels for both “ultra-clean chordal sounds” and “ultra-modern high-gain” tones.

His latest addition, a light Iconic Carlsbad Vintage Modern, is his first fully-customized build, designed to channel the warmth of semi-hollow Gibsons. 

“The neck is way thicker than the neck on my Stratocaster, so I find playing with my thumb behind the neck is more comfortable,” he says.

“The noiseless Seymour Duncan P-90s sound completely different to my Abasi. All pickups react to your playing and your amps in completely different ways. If I pick hard with the vintage pickups, they compress in a completely different way than the Fishmans, so I play differently as a result.

“The Carlsbad is much darker, for instance, than my Abasi Space-T, which is extremely bright and almost like a cartoonish version of what a Telecaster sounds like. Rhythm parts on the Carlsbad can be quite muddy, whereas on the Space-T they’re really clear and precise, so I’m always thinking about using different guitars for different parts of my songs.”

The duo plan to release new Victoria music throughout this year. Victoria himself tours during the summer as part of EDM prog jazz outfit Sungazer, while Garstka is on the road with Animals As Leaders.

• Find out more at Victoria’s website.

Dream Theater’s Dreamsonic tour – for which they recruited Devin Townsend and Animals As Leaders – recently came to a close, and to commemorate the occasion Tosin Abasi gifted John Petrucci an electric guitar from his brand, Abasi Concepts.

But this wasn’t just any electric guitar: instead, this was Abasi’s radical Emi 8 model, which revived the artwork of one of Trooch’s most iconic instruments – his Picasso-esque Ibanez JPM100 P1 signature guitar.

The JPM100 was first introduced in 1995, discontinued in 1999, and was notably the only John Petrucci Series production model. It arrived initially with five different color schemes, but arguably its most iconic variant came strapped to the P1, which saw action on Dream Theater's Images and Words record.

Fans of the finish will also associate the guitar with Rock Discipline – the Dream Theater virtuoso’s classic tuition tape from ‘96, which saw Trooch wield the technicolored six-string for a series of in-depth lessons.

It’s not an exaggeration to say Rock Discipline – and, by extension, that quirky JPM100 P1 – had a formative influence on countless players (Abasi Concepts COO Ivan Chopik counts himself among that crop), so to see the finish in 2023 makes us very nostalgic indeed. 

What’s more, to see it attached to the okoume body of an Emi 8 – one of today’s most ergonomically crafted and radically designed eight-strings – somehow seems even more fitting.

On Instagram, Abasi shared snaps of the guitar and wrote, “@johnpetrucciofficial has always been a massive source of inspiration for us @abasiconcepts, so we decided to pay homage to the [Greatest Of All Time] by recreating one of his iconic guitar finishes from the past with this sick one-off ēmi 8.”

Chopik went into further detail in a post of his own, revealing they tapped the artist who painted the original guitar, Dan Lawrence, to transform the Emi 8.

“Life definitely came full circle in this very cool moment,” he wrote. “@johnpetrucciofficial has always been a massive source of inspiration to us at Abasi Concepts (for me starting with Rock Discipline about 20 years ago), so we decided to pay homage to one of his iconic guitar finishes with this incredible one-off ēmi 8.” 

We haven’t yet seen footage of Petrucci play his new Emi 8, but now he’s got his hands on the spiritual successor to his JPM100 P1, perhaps a Rock Discipline sequel is in order?

What's more, the two Abasi Concepts leaders have stressed this is just a one-off, but we can’t help but harbor slim hopes that the other JPM100 finishes will also get resurrected.

All we’re saying is the artwork of the two-tone JPM100P3 – which saw action on Falling Into Infinity and Liquid Tension Experiment – would be the perfect follow-up model.

Head over to Abasi Concepts to found out more about the standard Emi 8.

While on the Dreamsonic tour, Petrucci and Abasi shared the stage to serve up spellbinding harmonies on Dream Theater's The Spirit Carries On.

Animals As Leaders have paid tribute to their guitar tech Dave Cohen, who has unexpectedly passed away.

Cohen, who worked as a tech for Tosin Abasi’s prog metal outfit, was also guitar tech for Stryper, and had been on the road with Dream Theater during their recent Dreamsonic tour, for which Animals As Leaders served as support. Cohen was also the founder and head luthier of custom guitar builder, Equilibrium Guitars.

Aside from his tech and luthier roles, Cohen was a player himself, having been the guitarist for numerous bands, including metal outfit Chuggernaut.

“Dear friends, Last night we experienced a part of life that none of us look forward to, the unexpected passing of our dear friend and guitar tech Dave Cohen,” Animals As Leaders wrote on their Instagram page. “He was an amazing person, loved by all who met him. 

“He was a wise and centered being. A true inspirational person to be around,” they continued. “We are thankful for the experiences and memories we shared with Dave. Our condolences go out to his friends and family. A soul is lost but never forgotten.”

The news prompted an outpouring of tributes from Cohen’s colleagues and friends, with Dream Theater writing on their own social media pages, “He was the guitar tech for our musical brothers, Animals As Leaders, and an integral part of our Dreamsonic tour.

“Dave's passion for guitars shined through every moment he spent caring for the instruments with great pride in his work,” the band continued. “Dave's infectious spirit and unwavering dedication were a constant source of inspiration to everyone who knew him.

“To Dave's family and friends, we extend our deepest sympathies. His impact was immeasurable, touching the lives of everyone he met.”

The band’s drummer, Mike Mangini, also commented on Animals As Leaders’ post, writing, “My eyes were not dry today. It took one conversation early in this tour with Dave to see his incredible soul.”

Animals As Leaders and Dream Theater were joined by numerous artists in paying tribute to Cohen, with Sarah Longfield commenting, “There are no words. Dave was alway so kind and wise, not to mention one hell of a luthier/musician.”

The official account of Lollar Pickups added, “The world is going to be worse off without Dave. He always offered great ideas, insight, and, of course, a smile and a hug when we met up. He’ll be missed by so many.”

Tosin Abasi was once the poster boy for Axe-Fx and amp modeling, but recent years have seen the eight-string virtuoso turn to real amps and fully loaded pedalboards. In fact, the Animals as Leaders mastermind has been so convinced by the tonal benefits of tubes that he re-recorded latest album Parrhesia with real amps, despite having already tracked the entire thing using plugins.

So, any further sonic switch-ups from the pioneering player and gear savant will be watched with considerable interest, and for Animals as Leaders’ current tour with Dream Theater and Devin Townsend, Abasi has overhauled his tube amp backline.

The Abasi Concepts leader is now using a Bad Cat Amps Lynx – a high-gain, EL34-loaded head and combo designed for highly articulated distortion tones, with a built-in noise gate. This is paired with an unreleased pre-production model named “Jet Black” for a stereo rig.

“When I plugged into the new Bad Cats I didn’t have to look for my sound first – it was immediately there,” says Abasi of the new setup. “I hadn’t heard such clarity and definition before.”

“Working with Tosin is simply inspiring,” adds Peter Arends, CEO of Bad Cat Amplifiers. “His creativity, musical abilities and innovative playing are recognized and admired well beyond any rock genre. We share a passion for creating new sounds without preconceived ideas and we certainly won‘t stop here.”

The Lynx’s high-gain credentials initially made us wonder whether Abasi had ditched his Pathos distortion pedal, which he previously ran into a cleaner Morgan backline. But a closer look at the new Jet Black reveals a built-in tremolo circuit – normally a surefire sign of a cleaner amp – which could potentially still play host to a drive pedal or two.

Given that, we’d wager the Jet Black is simply a new Bad Cat amp design rather than any kind of Abasi signature amp. But a model that combines the best of both amps? Now that would be a smart idea.

However he’s configured his backline, Abasi’s tones are currently sounding mighty fine indeed – as evidenced when he joined John Petrucci to lock fretboards for some spellbinding harmonies on Dream Theater's The Spirit Carries On during their joint tour.

Last Friday (June 16), Dream Theater kicked off their Dreamsonic 2023 tour, for which they’ve recruited the supporting services of Animals As Leaders – and it wasn’t long before the two bands’ resident electric guitar heroes were sharing the stage.

On paper, a tour that includes both John Petrucci and Tosin Abasi is absolutely ripe for awe-inspiring guitar action, and those in attendance on the first night got exactly that when Abasi joined Dream Theater for a set-closing rendition of The Spirit Carries On.

With their two Ernie Ball Music Man models in tow, the pair were also joined by Abasi’s fellow support act Devin Townsend, who opted to abstain from guitar duties, instead sacrificing the six-string spotlight to Trooch and Abasi.

Abasi and his radical Kaizen model, which he developed with EBMM back in 2022, spend much of the time locked into rhythm duties, while Petrucci – with his guitar “high and nerdy” and knee up on a foot rest – takes his Majesty signature guitar for a spin during the song’s guitar solo.

The Abasi Concepts creator soon gets in on the lead action, though, sonically aligning his own outro melody with that of Trooch’s, resulting in a goosebump-inducing harmonized exchange between the pair.

It turned out to be a hair-raising finale to the 11-song setlist, which had previously seen Dream Theater perform songs such as Solitary Shell, The Alien, Sleeping Giant and The Count of Tuscany.

Indeed, the Kaizen proved to be the perfect sonic foil for the Majesty, both of which were wielded with utmost efficiency as their respective players squeezed out lashings of vibrato and feel for the mesmerizing curtain closer.

“Touring with @dreamtheaterofficial is sick enough but getting to share the stage, harmonizing with @johnpetrucciofficial is beyond words,” Abasi wrote on Instagram after the show. “You guys gotta make to sure come out to this tour.”

Unsurprisingly, a handful of guitar stars were just as enamored with the team-up as fans were: “Ahhhhh yesssssss this is so amazing,” commented Nita Strauss. “Beautiful,” wrote Rick Beato.

Fortunately for those with an eye on attending a Dreamsonic 2023 show – and for those eagerly following developments online – the whole performance wasn’t just a one-off. According to Setlist.fm, Abasi and Townsend have both featured for the finale for all three shows so far.

Now we just need to see Trooch cameo on an Animals As Leaders track and take a swing at some thumping lines. There are still 26 shows left of Dreamsonic 2023, so never say never.

For a list of upcoming tour dates, head over to Dream Theater’s website.

NAMM 2023: Ernie Ball Music Man has bolstered its Kaizen electric guitar range with the introduction of a long-awaited six-string version of the radical Tosin Abasi-designed instrument.

At last year’s NAMM show, the Animals As Leaders guitar titan and Ernie Ball Music Man announced their surprise partnership by releasing the fruits of their collaborative labor – the Kaizen – which was introduced exclusively as a seven-string machine.

The reaction to the forward-thinking creation was overwhelmingly positive, though fans of standard six-string guitars – and those who weren’t particularly taken by the seven-string design – all had the same question on their minds: will a standard Kaizen ever get released?

Well, those guitarists have now got what they wished for, with the arrival of the latest Kaizen model.

Despite arriving with one less string, the Kaizen retains the majority of the flagship model’s appointments, including the multi-scale design that ranges from 24.75” to 25.5”. 

Once again, the custom-designed alder body is paired with a roasted figure maple neck, which in turn is topped with an Infinity Radius ebony fingerboard. According to the brand, the strategically crafted conical radius also utilizes uniquely placed dot inlays to increase comfort and enhance visibility of the ‘board.

The same hardware can also be found, with the Kaizen’s multi-scale design playing host to a modern Music Man tremolo system – an unusual spec for multi-scale guitars that also offers spring dampeners that work to alleviate unwanted noise.

Steinberger Locking Gearless tuners also make the cut, as does a set of Music Man Custom Wound pickups. Specifically, the Kaizen features a HT Bridge humbucker and Offset Mini Neck humbucker, both of which are wired to a three-way selector switch, and master volume and tone knobs.

When the model arrived last year, Abasi said the Kaizen reflected his desire to keep “pushing the instrument forward”.

“Part of the reason we did this is encapsulated in the name, 'Kaizen'. I think a lot of the time, people look at the guitar as fixed. That is totally fine, but I am inspired by pushing the instrument further, and I think this was an opportunity to do that,” Abasi said of the collaboration at the time.

Both the six-string and seven-string Kaizens are available in four finishes: the standard Apollo Black, and the limited-to-60 Indigo, Mint and Chalk.

Because of the absence of that extra string, the latest Kaizen is slightly cheaper, ringing in at $3,799.

For more information, head over to Ernie Ball Music Man.

In what was probably the biggest shock of this year’s NAMM show, Ernie Ball Music Man announced the Kaizen – an all-new electric guitar designed in collaboration with Animals As Leaders virtuoso Tosin Abasi.

Following June’s announcement, the guitar is now finally available for preorder – and with the news comes a fresh demo video from Abasi, who puts the radical new model through its paces in a new composition inspired by the guitar itself.

No stranger to innovative guitar designs himself – having launched his own brand, Abasi Concepts – Abasi was brought on board to help design a seven-string guitar that could cater to the modern-minded player.

With a decidedly Abasi-esque aesthetic, the radical double-cut – which is now available for preorder – boasts a wealth of forward-thinking appointments and is appropriately named after the Japanese word for “continuous change or improvement over time”.

It’s a sentiment that was at the heart of the guitar’s design, with the Kaizen aiming to meet Abasi’s own desire for “pushing the instrument further”. It's important to note this isn't an Abasi signature, but is instead a new Music Man model in its own right.

At its foundation, the Kaizen is composed of an alder body, roasted maple neck and ebony fretboard, and features a multi-scale design that measures from 24.75” at the high E to 25.7” at the low E. As such, it promises to provide robust string tension for thick, full rhythm tones and a traditional feel for lead playing.

When placed under the microscope, the Kaizen’s more exotic appointments can be found. The body – much like Abasi’s Larada design – has been purposefully contoured in an effort to provide “extreme comfort” and a well-balanced playing platform with “unrestricted fret access”.

Elsewhere, the neck has been created with an Infinity Radius – a strategically positioned conical radius, which is said to increase overall playing comfort while ensuring enhanced visibility of the fretboard.

It also comes loaded with a custom Heat Treated humbucker in the bridge position and a slanted neck mini-humbucker, both of which have been specially designed for the Kaizen. The HT pickups are a new-for-2022, patent-pending innovation for Ernie Ball, and promise to provide extra output, excellent touch sensitivity and a more powerful bass response.

Tying it all together is a modern Music Man tremolo system – an uncommon appointment for multi-scale guitars, which comes fitted with spring dampeners in an effort to alleviate unwanted overtones – and Steinberger Gearless locking tuners

Of the surprise model, Abasi commented, “I chose to collaborate with Music Man because I’ve been a fan of their guitars and artists for a while. 

“I see myself as a designer and love the act of creating new guitars,” he continued. “A parallel project looked like a fun and unique opportunity to do something new. I think the result is truly a blend of our ideas.”

Abasi added: “Part of the reason we did this is encapsulated in the name, 'Kaizen'. I think a lot of the time, people look at the guitar as fixed. That is totally fine, but I am inspired by pushing the instrument further, and I think this was an opportunity to do that.”

Speaking to Guitar World about the new model, Abasi reflected that he was like a “kid in a candy store” during the design process, and that although the Kaizen isn’t a signature guitar, “it’s got my DNA in it”.

The Kaizen is available in two finishes – Apollo Black ($3,999) and Spectraflare ($4,099) – with the latter limited to just 75 units worldwide. Additionally, each Kaizen comes with a G&G hardshell case. For more information, head to Ernie Ball Music Man.

In 2022 the art of eight-string guitar is in rude health. This was once an incredibly obscure instrument, with roots going as far back as 19th-century classical music. But since 2007, when Ibanez launched the RG2228, the first mass-produced eight-string, its popularity has grown and grown.

You can easily find an eight-string in most first-hand guitar shops. This popularity is mainly thanks to metal bands who called for lower and thicker tunings to take their imaginations to the extreme – foremost among them Meshuggah, math-metal pioneers from Sweden, and Animals As Leaders, masters of instrumental tech-metal from Washington D.C.

In both bands' new albums, the extended range of the guitar is explored by two guitarists: Märten Hagström and Fredrik Thordendal on Meshuggah's Immutable; Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes on Animals As Leaders' Parrhesia.

In conversation, Märten and Tosin reveal the secrets to mastering this instrument – and what it gives them in terms of creativity.

What have you both learned about getting more mileage out of an eight-string?

Tosin: “That’s an important question, because a lot of people might be looking at their guitars from a six-string perspective. Ultimately, the six-string can be the core of how you understand an eight-string, especially if you retain standard tuning. 

“We often tune our eight-strings to drop E, so you can still perceive it as a six-string in standard tuning. All scales and shapes repeat per octave, so it’s good to acknowledge the repetition within the fingerboard. 

“Imagine if you’re playing an A power chord on the fifth fret on your sixth string – with our tuning, if you barre all the way down, you have another fifth interval and a low octave. 

“It’s like drop D, because those three strings give you a functional chord. That helps retain orientation. You can use lower notes in the same positions, while also finding higher notes to create more width and distance.”

Märten: “We didn't have an engineering masterplan or any idea how to go about using eight-strings. With Meshuggah, it's always been about finding unique sounds. So we learned how to play eight-strings as we were learning how to compose with them. Our technique is something we manufactured as we went along. 

“The best advice I can give is find how the extended range can benefit your style. That's what worked for us. It affected how we attack the strings and how we write riffs. It was all about new atmospheres and avenues that weren't available on a six-string. Start thinking about what the extended range can actually enhance. 

“To be honest, we would have loved to continue using baritones and seven-strings. We didn't neccessarily want to add extra strings, but we knew we liked the tone.”

A lot of players find the jump from six to seven easy enough, but eight is an entirely different ball game...

Mårten: “I think the beauty of eight-strings is that it takes away the normal aspects of guitar playing – they can feel huge, like playing a piano. There are a lot of adjustments in terms of angles, like with your wrist and picking technique... all these small things you have to get used to. 

“As you said, if you play a six-string, everything will transpose pretty nicely onto a seven. Eights are a different matter. For me, it’s all about being comfortable with the tone. Sometimes I hear eight-string stuff and it sounds like someone’s just detuned something. And other times I will hear someone actually utilising what the instrument can do.”

Tosin: “It’s all about taking the chord voicings you know and adapting them to the eight-string, and using octave displacement. You can also have a lot of fun using the low E as a pedal tone in your riffs, using other chords to superimpose against it, like a G major. There are a lot of options out there.

“I like to make use of the full range of the eight-string, almost like a piano or harp. You get this huge spread that’s not possible on a six-string. Think of it as an opportunity to use three-octave chords. Other times, it’s fun to just turn it up and play your favourite Meshuggah riffs!”

Mårten, you were experimenting with eight-strings as far as back 2002 – they were the stuff of legend back then.

Mårten: “We started discussing different ways to come up with new things after touring the [1998] Chaosphere album. We wondered what would happen if we recorded three bass guitars, for example. Just to see how different the band would sound. 

“Randomly we ended up talking to a guy from Nevborn Guitars, who wanted us to try out their eight-string prototypes, though we were actually already working with Ibanez on custom seven-strings at the time. It was far from finished, but me and Fredrik found that his eight-string lent itself well to playing differently.”

In what sense?

Mårten: “We quickly figured out that powerchord chugging and riffing didn’t really work, it wasn’t as simple as transposing ideas down to the eighth string. The tone of the instrument lent itself better to the single-string stuff we’re known for. For us it was like, ‘Wow, this is a new tool that makes us sound different!’ 

“We sounded deeper and started to write unusual things that seemed to capture the imagination, with this whole other kind of sound. We then started write things for the eight-string before we even owned one. We would tune down our seven-strings, the entire [2002] Nothing record is an eight-string album recorded on seven-string guitars... which was a bitch! We would play four bars and then need to retune, again and again.”

Tosin, you launched your own guitar company, Abasi Concepts, in 2019 and with great success – most of your models are currently sold out. What have you learned about making extended range instruments along the way?

Tosin: “Manufacturing high-end instruments is a challenge. The standard that guitarists expect is very high, and it should be! We’ve created an eight-string design that feels more approachable and guitar-like than the others out there. That was the starting point: a guitar that didn’t feel like playing leads on a surfboard. 

“It had to encourage people to play complex things, sounding incredible both clean and heavy. It also had to look modern – it’s hard to introduce a new body shape that doesn’t turn players off, so we designed something that felt bold and noticeable but not too alien. 

“We’re trying to distill what makes a guitar desirable. What is mojo? Why would you choose an Abasi over something else? It boils down to wood selection, like more stable and lightweight roasted woods which translate as a guitar that feels more alive, and pickups like the [Fishman] Fluence stuff, where you get a noiseless single coil with multiple voicings. It’s been fun. Gary Clark Jr. bought one of our guitars [a six-string Space T] and we didn’t even know. I had to reach out to him afterwards!

Both of your bands are known for unusual time signatures – or at least odd-time riffs against steady 4/4 beats...

Mårten: “A song like Bleed [from 2008 album obZen] sounds tricky but it’s actually pretty simple. It’s triplets in odd groupings over a 4/4 beat, with added strokes to make the rhythm move. That’s something we do a lot in our riffs, it’s that the awkward, funky groove that comes out when we write. 

“The problem with playing triplets for seven-and-a-half minutes is consistency. Being technically able to play them in a relaxed manner for that long, as if you were playing an AC/DC song, is the challenge. So the hardest thing isn’t the timings themselves, it’s the parts that are like 92 notes in a row that never repeat, like we did on [2005 album] Catch Thirtythree. 

“It’s the faster songs that have 16 full bars before coming back to the one. It can be tricky for the mind, especially when they only change ever so slightly. It might sound like the same riff over and over, but there are subtle differences. You can easily get lost. It’s like, ‘Man, is this the one here or do we have another bar to go?’ Keeping track is the hardest part, but it’s often over straight 4/4... just like AC/DC!”

Tosin: “There’s a thing I do quite a lot which is play in 4/4 but I’ll make the end a little longer, maybe for another quarter note, so now you’re in a measure of five. But the general sense of the phrase feels like it’s in 4/4 and repeats evenly. 

“It’s all about arbitrarily extending or shortening the length of certain phrases. I like to do it because it rubs expectation. The evenness of rhythm is something so deeply intuitive that we all expect to be able to tap along or nod our heads. 

“But I love rhythmic and melodic surprises. I’ll come up with something that feels graspable, then I might add the complexity in, maybe every other repeat there’s one less quarter note than before or I might extend the phrase a few more notes into the next octave. It can technically be 4/4 but exploring these ideas means you can sound like it’s something way outside. The trick is to count in longer chunks.”

Both of you have new albums out. What gear are we hearing on the recordings?

Mårten: “In the studio, most of our albums have fallen back on Dual Rectifiers. Those are the go-to amps for us. This time I found the EVH 5150 III 100-Watt heads to be exactly what we were looking for. They had the gain, control and Mesa/Boogie-ness we needed, but with a more raw and unbridled kind of tone. They sounded less predictable, more organic. 

“Instead of the usual Fortin 33 pedal as a booster, I actually ended up using Misha Mansoor’s Precision Drive. That was suggested by our singer [Jens Kidman], as he had one. The gate on it isn’t really all that good, it’s cool for live use but in the studio it needs some work. 

“But the sound of the Precision Drive going into the EVH was super. I would use the preamp of the EVH’s second channel and run it through the power amp of a Mesa/Boogie Roadster, then out through EVH cabs. For the clean parts, I used my Roland JC-120 head.”

Tosin: “We began production for this album with my Neural DSP plug-in, but when it came time to mix we decided to take the DIs and see what kind of results we’d get by experimenting with real amps, cabs and mics. We started with my Morgan SW50R, which is a single channel tube head that I use as a pedal platform, with my Friedman BE-OD overdrive and the Bogner Harlow and Ecstasy Blue pedals. 

“Those were the main drives we were running into the clean head. The Friedman pedal into the Morgan was perfect for all the slap tones and articulate stuff, even some of the heavier stuff. For the lead tones, it was my Abasi Pathos pedal going into the Morgan. We also ran a modded Soldano SLO from the 90s, which added this great character in the midrange when blended in.”

And how about the actual eight-strings themselves?

Mårten: “I’d say 95 percent of the guitars were recorded with my M8M Ibanez Custom. It’s basically our signature M8M but with a bolt-on neck and it’s a little shorter in scale with a piezo mounted on it. It’s my favourite instrument. I use it as much as I can, but not live because I’m scared of destroying it. 

“For the clean parts, I used my Roland JC-120 head. I don’t know what Fredrik used because he recorded in his studio. He wasn’t around for any of this album and hasn’t been writing for years, he’s been busy doing his own thing. For the four leads he recorded at his place, I’m pretty sure it was his [signature] Ibanez Stoneman.”

Tosin: “We used Abasi Concepts guitars for nearly everything – the solo on Thoughts And Prayers was performed on an ESP. For some reason we weren’t happy with the tone on the Monomyth solo so the engineer suggested using one of his guitars. We went digging through and there was this Les Paul.

“I couldn’t even tell you what year it was from but it had this nice prominent midrange without being too bright, it sounded really smooth so I tracked with that. I’m pretty pragmatic in the studio – if my favourite gear is not doing what I want then I’m quick to find an objective solution. It’s kinda funny though, because you wouldn’t think a Les Paul would be anywhere near an Animals As Leaders record... but it happened!”

• Animals As Leaders' Parrhesia is out now via Sumerian.
• Meshuggah's Immutable is out now via Atomic Fire.

I call it ‘sharpening the knife,’” says Tosin Abasi, describing the approach he and his longtime Animals As Leaders guitar partner Javier Reyes adopted when recording the group’s super-aggressive fifth album, Parrhesia. 

“On the past couple of albums, we explored a lot of different directions; we got very experimental and we did some fusion-y stuff. This time out, Javier and I consolidated the elements we wanted to incorporate and we went for a more bludgeoning experience.” He laughs. “That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?”

For Javier Reyes, the decision to operate at this maximum intensity was a no-brainer. “We did the more ambiguous thing, so this album is our way of telling people, ‘Don’t get things twisted – we can still go hard,’” he says. “We like the fusion-y jazz stuff; otherwise, we wouldn’t have written it. But at the end of the day, our roots are in progressive metal. That’s the core of our fanbase – metal fans. So we wanted to go back and continue that train of thought.”

It’s been six years since Abasi, Reyes and drummer Matt Garstka issued an Animals As Leaders album (their last effort was 2016’s The Madness of Many). That’s the longest stretch between records since the band’s 2009 self-titled debut. 

Abasi and Reyes first started compiling demos for the new set two years ago, during the first wave of the Covid pandemic, and they spent six months recording the album – four tracks were self-produced, while the remaining cuts were done in collaboration with the band’s long-serving producer (and founding member of the D.C.-based prog-metal band Periphery), Misha Mansoor. 

When asked if the pandemic’s on-again, off-again lockdowns contributed in any way to the relentlessly belligerent nature of their new music, Abasi says, “It’s nothing we talked about, per se. I don’t think the album relates to the pandemic, but maybe some pent-up frustration came through. Basically, we just started molding the music, and we found that it was heavier than usual.” 

Indeed, the nine tracks on Parrhesia contain some of the most vicious moments Animals As Leaders have ever recorded. Conflict Cartography and Monomyth come at you like battering rams, with eight-stringed wonders Abasi and Reyes set on two modes: intense and high-octane intense. 

The aptly named Micro-Aggressions is a string-skipping punisher, with hot beams of blitzing riffs firing off in every conceivable direction – before you have a second to duck, another fierce salvo is on the way.

Gestaltzerfall – now there’s a mouthful – flies across the sonic spectrum as the two guitarists summersault over each other while trading spiky, meticulously targeted body blows.

There are brief reprieves in the assault – the whacked-out and woozy guitar lines of The Problem of Other Minds float over a rippling, hypnotic rhythm bed, and Asahi is a surprisingly gentle mood piece highlighted by graceful, legato soloing – but for much of the ride, Parrhesia will have listeners gripping their seats for dear life.

For those who have yet to Google, the definition of “parrhesia” is “boldness or freedom of speech” and, in some instances, “to speak the truth.” Abasi admits he thought it was “a cool word that encapsulates our approach to making sounds,” but he also sees it as a metaphor for the band’s philosophy. 

“There’s kind of an iconoclastic element to what we do that cuts against the grain, but it’s true to us. Considering the cultural discourse right now, there’s so much being said, and I think just the idea of being centered on truth and being committed to that has always been a compass we’ve used to direct how we write music.”

As virtuosos, do you two feel a responsibility to push yourselves on the guitar at all times? Do you ever find it a burden?

ABASI: “For me, it is. One hundred percent. The competitive element to playing guitar is a driving force, but it also can be a curse, because the likelihood that you’re 'the best' is going to be pretty low. There can be an annoying element to virtuosity. 

“Let’s say you want to express yourself a certain way in a song, but then you feel like the idea you wrote is too simple because you’re known for writing complex things. So that might mean you won’t go in that direction because you feel locked into this idea that your musical value is musical complexity.”

Sounds frustrating.

ABASI: “Sure. For me, as a lead guitar player, I see so much insane talent in the world right now. It almost makes you go, 'Why even attempt it?' When that happens to me, I have to remind myself that it’s obviously more about unique contributions. 

“I feel like I have some musical ideas that are worthwhile, and they’re more about individuality as opposed to some competition for cleanliness, speed and stuff like that. [Laughs] Not that I haven’t been guilty of participating in all that myself. I just think it can be a double-edged sword, for sure.” 

Two of your first videos from the album, Monomyth and The Problem of Other Minds, featured dance troupes interpreting the music. Do you have any kind of visual component in mind when you’re writing? 

REYES: “There’s no visual component in mind during the writing process, but I think we’ve always wanted to have some type of visual that’s equally as strong as the music. Some of our past music videos haven’t been of the same caliber as the two you mentioned, but we were just kind of following along with what the label wanted. 

“This time around, we wanted to have something very compelling that partnered with the music, but that came after the writing. It’s not like Tosin shows up and says, ‘By the way, when I’m playing this riff in 11/16, I think we should have a video with contemporary dancers.’ [Laughs]”

ABASI: “My partner is a visual artist, and we work together on some stuff – not for Animals As Leaders, but I do think we approached her about doing the album artwork. Then she had some ideas for a music video, and I think a lot of the Monomyth and Problem of Other Minds were visual ideas she already had. 

“In the past, Javier and I talked about getting dancers to do something to visually represent the music, but I think we were thinking more contemporary, as in urban, where it was very rhythmically synced. We thought that that would be fun. But then it took on a different, more high art direction.”

How do you two go about complementing and contrasting your guitar tones? With so many strings to work with, I imagine there are a lot of frequencies bopping around.

REYES: “In the writing process, we don’t necessarily worry too much about our tones clashing. It’s all very section focused. If the rhythm guitar needs more low end, we’ll put more low end on it. Things change a lot with us. 

“During recording, Tosin might play one part and I play another, but when we get on stage, it can be completely opposite. So we’re more focused on just what the song needs and what the recording needs, as opposed to what our individual needs are.”

ABASI: “It’s interesting to me, because as a guitarist your tone is super-personal. Jav has certain amp styles he likes – certain pickup voicings and all that stuff. And, of course, I do too. They’re similar, but they differ in minor ways. 

“When we get together, we take a pretty utilitarian, greater-good approach of ‘I know that’s your favorite overdrive pedal, but it sounds weird in the mix, so we’re going to use this other thing.’ We’re very objective during mixing. Whether you like this or that, it’s all about how it sounds in the end.” 

You’ve worked with Misha Mansoor in the past, and he’s obviously a very simpatico ear in the studio. I’m curious, though – have you ever considered bringing in somebody completely outside your wheelhouse?

ABASI: “That’s a really great question. A few years ago, we were really interested in that. There’s a Norwegian band called Jaga Jazzist; they remind me of progressive bands from the ’70s, but they have horn arrangements and hammered instruments and stuff. Anyway, the main guy in that band [Lars Horntveth] was someone who stood out to me as a potential producer. 

“We’ve considered other people as well, but it’s just never worked out. We self-produce a lot, which has its benefits as far as defining the sound for ourselves. Every once in a while, though, we do reach out for outside influence, just to get some different results. Maybe in the future we’ll end up working with some other producers.”

REYES: “Given the complexity of our music, I think there’s some concern with finding somebody who can understand what’s happening with the guitar and drum parts. That’s been one of the benefits we have with Misha: he gets what we’re doing, 1,000 percent. In a lot of ways, he’s partly responsible for our sound. He and Tosin wrote the first album together, and so that kind of gave Animals As Leaders a habitat to exist.”

There are so many playing aspects to touch on in your new songs – almost too many. In Monomyth, there are these chugging chords at the end. They don’t even sound like a guitar; they sound like a door slamming. 

ABASI: “We’re probably just palm muting. Right, Jav?

REYES: “Yeah, it’s just those chugs. I think it’s a combination of the amp tone with how we’re playing. It’s just a very aggressive chug. There’s nothing too crazy about it, but it is a little sick.”

Red Miso starts out dreamy and soothing, and then it turns super-scary. Did you ever think of just continuing the first mood and letting it be that?

ABASI: “It’s funny, but like I said, we set something in motion and we’re not really always sure what’s going to happen. On that beginning sequence, I was using an Eventide H9 pedal that has a stutter delay. I was just messing around with a clean tone and that delay, and that was the seed of the song. 

“When we tracked it, that’s when we made musical decisions in real time: ‘OK, try this. Let’s add this. Try this section and accent these parts with heavy guitar.’ The song is a bit of a linear journey from dreaming to very aggressive. It could have ended up in a multitude of ways.”

REYES: “We try to think of how to get back to that first section and bring the song full circle, but things just happen naturally. With Red Miso, by the time we got to that crazy part in the middle where it’s just linear and nothing repeats, we were like, ‘OK, there’s no returning back.’ The song kind of just started directing itself at that point.”

Gestaltzerfall and Asahi have moments of beautiful legato playing. Between the two of you, who is the big legato guy?

ABASI: “I feel like maybe Jav is, because he’s got some classical slurs, like left-hand stuff.” 

REYES: “Yeah. I don’t really alternate-pick that well, actually, so I rely on my legato.”

There’s an anxious quality throughout Thoughts and Prayers. Is the contrast to the title intentional, and is it supposed to be a bit of social commentary?

ABASI: “There’s a cynical take on ‘thoughts and prayers’ in that you have these events that are by the hands of men, but there’s this uniform appeal to something that isn’t man. I think at a point it started to just ring hollow. 

“It’s a layered thing, because the intent is one thing – you’re sending thoughts and prayers – but in effect, are you even doing anything? It’s kind of like the intentions there, but is it a way to not really have to do more?

“I think the juxtaposition is about a type of helplessness. Whenever you hear ‘thoughts and prayers,’ it’s because something terrible has happened. The song has a bit of a complex; the vibe of it is slightly off. 

“There’s this cyclical melody that is almost major, but there are intervals that are slightly outside of what you’d expect, and it’s kind of mildly anxious. There’s an energy to it – it’s slightly dark, but it’s also hopeful.

On Micro-Aggressions, every 20 seconds there’s something new to listen to. But there’s one section with this blazing rock chord and some harmonized soloing. It sounded brilliant. Did you ever think of building a song from just that part? 

REYES: “No.”

ABASI: “We’re maximalists. More is more.”

REYES: “It’s like an artist working in front of his canvas. We can think of having the one part because that’s what’s going to be played live, but at the same time, we’re just on this mentality of what the song needs. ‘Does it sound better with a harmony that maybe we can’t play live?’ In the end, it’s about the recording.”

Let’s talk about the guitars you used on the album. Tosin, are you pretty much using your Abasi Concepts guitars?

ABASI: “Yeah. I would say, except for maybe one solo, all my parts were tracked with my guitar.”

REYES: “There’s a few solos on which we ended up using a Gibson.”

ABASI: “Oh yeah, the Les Paul.”

REYES: “Which is very random – there were sprinkles of it. It’s kind of what we were talking about earlier – ‘What does the recording need?’ In a perfect situation, we would have one guitar for the entire thing, but in the process of what’s best for the mix, when we were in the studio, my buddy had a bunch of relic guitars. He pulled out a Les Paul,  we hooked it up, and it sounded great.”

Javier, how about you? Did you mainly use your ESPs?

REYES: “No. All the rhythm stuff is with Tosin’s guitar. Again, it’s more of a utilitarian process. ‘Does the song need this or that, or are we going to add more difficulty by including another guitar and tone and whatnot?’”

By your own admission, you both push yourselves to make things complex. At the end of the day, though, do you ever just kick back and unwind by playing – oh, I don’t know – something like Taking Care of Business?

REYES: “No. [Laughs]”

ABASI: “I’ve been kind of getting into the blues, just like a fun…"

REYES: “By blues, he means Eric Gales.”

ABASI: “Yeah, Eric Gales and Joe Bonamassa and Josh Smith. But obviously, look, if I’m playing a type of music that has three chords, and each chord gets an equal number of beats, and those beats make up an even measure, I’m playing something a lot simpler than Animals As Leaders. 

“That’s a different type of muscle, and it’s relaxing because there’s parts of my brain that aren’t counting complex time signatures. You get to express yourself in a different way. For me, maybe playing classical guitar is how I unwind and play something that is just a different energy.” 

• Parrhesia is out now via Sumerian Records.

Tosin Abasi is known in these parts as a guitarist of brilliant yet unorthodox gifts, a player whose technicality and design acumen has extended what is possible from the electric guitar. 

But what if we told you he had considered making a blues album? And that he was taking online guitar lessons, learning from the likes of Oz Noy and Joe Bonamassa?

Well, that is indeed the case. Speaking to Premier Guitar alongside fellow Animals As Leaders guitarist Javier Reyes, Abasi admitted that he had been playing the blues, and that the idea of a blues album appealed to him.

“I was trying to work on my weak points, and I’m not a blues player, so I bought some blues lessons from Oz Noy, Josh Smith, and Ariel Posen,” said Abasi. “I’m still doing that. Joe Bonamassa just released some TrueFire stuff that’s really good.”

Of course, there would be more 5s, 7s and 8s on the tab notation than he might be used to seeing, but Abasi knows the material, having played blues for a paying audience when jamming some B.B. King with Joe Satriani, Guthrie Govan, Mike Keneally and friends at the G4 Experience.

When asked if there would be any boomer bends on his next album, Abasi said, 'Why not?'

“Bro, I’m bending on the album a little! On the next one, I think you will!,” said Abasi. “I’ve flirted with the idea of doing a blues album – which sounds funny to say – but I would put a twist on it. It’s kind of a novelty to me, but the constraint is fun to work with and to see where I can get creative within that box is an interesting idea.”

Abasi is the kind of player from whom we have learned to expect the unexpected, but what he might do within a blues framework would be fascinating – as would the idea of Catfish Blues being performed, or reimagined, on his Abasi Concepts eight-string.

Maybe he would call up something more old-school; for Animals As Leaders’ new album Parrhesia, he already has, with both Abasi and Reyes reaching for a Gibson Les Paul as an alternate to their signature guitars from Abasi Concepts and ESP respectively.

Perhaps the arc of the guitar universe is bending towards such synergies, that the tools fashioned in the ‘5os could truly be applied to new 21st century styles, and vice-versa, with the post-shred techniques of the progressive player being used to reimagine one of the electric guitar’s earliest styles.

That was the case with the guitar amps on Parrhesia. Typically, Animals As Leaders would use amp modelers and plugins. This time it was tube amps. Again, old-school tech brought to bear on a 21st-century style. 

But in what is sure to add some juice to the amp modelers vs solid-state vs tube amp debate, Abasi admitted that the tube amp and a mic’d cabinet simply sounded better. Once they had A/B’d both the plugin tones and those of the hardware tube amp, it was the latter that won out. Everything got tracked again.

“We found that particularly in the low-mids and the lower frequencies there was just a different character to a mic on a loud cab,” Abasi told Premier Guitar. “We objectively decided that we were getting more life out of the recorded tones and we were happier with the behavior in the low end.”

With Reyes admitting that 95 percent of the guitars on Parrhesia were physical amps, what does this mean for the Fractal Axe-Fx and Neural DSP plugins that Animals As Leaders would typically lean on? The internet will surely have its say, but then it’s all about what sounds right in the room.

Parrhesia is out now via Sumerian Records.

Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes, along with drummer Matt Garstka, are gearing up to release the new Animals As Leaders album, Parrhesia, and if the first three singles – Monomyth, The Problem of Other Minds and Gordian Naught – are anything to go by, the trio will be up to their usual prog-metal excellencies.

What’s unusual about the upcoming release, however, is the electric guitars the pair used to record. Yes, Abasi’s very own Abasi Concepts Larada model features in abundance, but for their first album in six years, the duo opted to experiment in the guitar department, and ended up playing a wholly unexpected six-string.

Speaking in the new issue of Guitar World, Abasi and Reyes revealed they turned to the Gibson Les Paul for inspiration in the studio, and used the iconic single-cut for a number of tracks and solos throughout Parrhesia.

When asked if his guitar setup was exclusively Abasi Concepts, Abasi noted, “Yeah. I would say, except for maybe one solo, all my parts were tracked with my guitar,” before being reminded by Reyes about the Les Paul they used.

“Which is very random,” Reyes picked up. “There were sprinkles of it. It’s kind of what we were talking about earlier – ‘What does the recording need?’

“In a perfect situation,” he continued, “we would have one guitar for the entire thing, but in the process of what’s best for the mix, when we were in the studio, my buddy had a bunch of relic guitars. He pulled out a Les Paul, we hooked it up, and it sounded great.”

The pair remained tight-lipped regarding which songs specifically featured the Les Paul, so it’s entirely possible we’ve already heard a flavor of it in one of the previously released singles.

Reyes then went on to explain that he also heavily relied on Abasi Concepts guitars, saying he decided against using his favored ESP guitar for rhythm work out of a desire to simplify the mixing process.

“All the rhythm stuff is with Tosin’s guitar,” he explained. “Again, it’s more of a utilitarian process. ‘Does the song need this or that, or are we going to add more difficulty by including another guitar and tone and whatnot?”

While on the subject of Abasi Concepts guitars, Abasi recently teased an upcoming nylon seven-string Larada model by putting a prospective prototype through its paces in a series of Instagram videos.

Head over to Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitar World, which features an in-depth tribute to 30 instrumental masters and an exclusive first look at the new Line 6 DL4 MkII.

As well as forming one-third of progressive metal outfit Animals As Leaders, the band’s resident guitar titan Tosin Abasi is also an entrepreneur, having launched his very own line of electric guitars under the Abasi Concepts umbrella.

Producing the type of instruments you’d expect a prominent purveyor of prog metal to champion, Abasi Concepts has released a handful of forward-thinking guitars, most notably in the form of the futuristic Larada family.

It hasn’t, however, shied away from making some more accessible instruments – see the Space T line, for example, played by Gary Clark Jr. – though for its next release, Abasi Concepts looks to be pushing the boundary-breaking boat out even further.

Taking to social media, Abasi teased his next Abasi Concepts creation, a nylon seven-string Larada, and put the prospective prototype through its paces in a series of scintillating fretboard workouts.

Seeing as it’s a Larada model, the classical-inspired axe also adopts a few high-end metal quirks, such as the addition of fanned frets. It’s also got two control knobs – probably volume and tone – which are undoubtedly wired to a piezo-style pickup of some kind.

In a bid to flex the new model’s versatility, Abasi first makes his way through some moody minor musings, making the most of the extra string for some brooding bass notes while tinkering away with silky string-skipping lines.

“Fanned fret, seven string, classical Larada though!” Abasi said in the accompanying caption. “This is a prototype, but man does sound [and] play great.”

A follow-up post saw the nylon Larada host a more jazz-inspired routine, with Abasi showcasing his own instrumental proficiency by employing rapid-fire alternate and hybrid-picking patterns to improvise over a hip-hop sample.

“Messing around a bit on this prototype, trying not to play entirely too many notes. I’ve always wanted a nylon that played like an electric,” admitted Abasi.

And, just to make sure the nylon seven-string Larada was totally up to scratch, a third and final video saw Abasi lock into a galloping metronome and deploy his thump-and-slap technique – which so often is the force behind his Animals As Leaders riffs – for a quasi-classical drill.

According to the official Abasi Concepts Instagram page, the Larada nylon seven-string is still in development at the brand’s research and development lab, meaning it will probably be a while before people can get their hands on it. 

To keep up to date with all things Abasi, visit Abasi Concepts, or check out Tosin Abasi’s Instagram page.

In other Abasi news, Animals As Leaders will release their upcoming album, Parrhesia, this Friday (March 25). Three singles – Monomyth, The Problem of Other Minds and Gordian Naught – have been released so far.

The three-piece have also announced a 19-date US tour to support Parrhesia, which will kick off on March 30 at Denver’s Summit Music Hall and conclude on April 22 at Theater At The Ace Hotel in LA.

For more info, visit Animals As Leaders.

Welcome to Guitar World’s weekly roundup of the musical highlights from the, erm, world of guitar. Every seven days (or thereabouts), we endeavor to bring you a selection of songs from across the guitar universe, all with one thing in common: our favorite instrument plays a starring role.

Jason Richardson – Upside Down (feat. Tim Henson)

What is it? A new collaborative effort from progressive guitar maestros Jason Richardson and Tim Henson. To be frank, it’s a wonder how these two titans never run out of rule-bending ideas, such is the expansiveness of their playing. Nevertheless, Upside Down proves the pair’s indescribable creativity is still firing on all cylinders, and that they’re continuing to push the guitar to its absolute limits.

Standout guitar moment: Choosing a standout moment in Upside Down is an impossible task. In an ideal world, “the first five minutes and 43 seconds” would be the answer. However, there’s only a 30-second passage – Henson’s guest solo – in which the pair play together, so that feels like a suitable compromise.

For fans of: Polyphia, Manuel Gardner Fernandes, Ichika Nito

– Matt Owen 

HEALTH, Lamb of God – Cold Blood

What is it? The single that kicks off the build-up to Health’s recently announced new album, DISCO4 :: PART II. Following previously released tracks with Nine Inch Nails, Poppy and Perturbator – an eclectic mix of artists as it is – Cold Blood sees the LA noise rock trio join forces with Virginia groove metal titans Lamb of God, letting their new collaborators take the creative reins, with Willie Adler and Mark Morton’s guitar riffs snatching the spotlight.

Standout guitar moment: The guitar riff when the tempo picks up at the 1:13 mark. It might be predictably LoG, but they’ve found a winning songwriting formula, so why mess with it?

For fans of: Machine Head, Trivium, Hatebreed

– Sam Roche

Orville Peck – C'mon Baby, Cry

What is it? The swaggeringly catchy lead single from Bronco: Chapter 1, the new EP from America’s favorite masked country star, C'mon Baby, Cry is the product of a skilled songwriter who can take a set of standard ingredients and create something that leaves a unique, lasting impression.

Standout guitar moment: There’s no big guitar break to be found here, but the song’s central guitar figure and sunny acoustic strums are played with enough gusto and showmanship to match Peck’s dazzling vocal performance. 

For fans of: Kacey Musgraves, Dolly Parton, The Cactus Blossoms 

– Jackson Maxwell

Snail Mail – Adore You (Valentine Demo)

What is it? Lindsey Jordan’s synth-tinged sophomore effort bucked many of the ideas found on her indie-guitar masterclass debut, but this demo take of Valentine’s title track harks back to Snail Mail’s heart-on-sleeve singer-songwriter origins. The final version’s mammoth chorus has yet to be realized here, and teamed with that delicate single-coil tone, Adore You becomes less of a breakup anthem, and more of a tender love letter.

Standout guitar moment: The track’s neat fingerpicking pattern gets the most out of a chord progression that simply cannot sound tired no matter how many times it turns around.

For fans of: Phoebe Bridgers, Soccer Mommy, Lucy Dacus

– Michael Astley-Brown

Damon Johnson & The Get Ready – Can’t Clap Any Louder 

What is it? A track taken from Damon Johnson & The Get Ready’s newest nine-track album, Battle Lessons. This time out, Johnson – whose A-list credits include Black Star Riders, Alice Cooper and Brother Cane – gets his time to shine, and takes the opportunity to rummage through his stellar six-string arsenal for a heavy-hitting, hard-rocking romp.

Standout guitar moment: Each chorus is treated to a followup solo, though the second lead effort is a particular highlight. It’s got everything you could want from a classic rock solo: pentatonic licks, motifs that migrate their way up the neck and a climactic high-end bend.

For fans of: AC/DC, Black Star Riders, Brother Cane

– Matt Owen

Kurt Vile – Like Exploding Stones

What is it? The loping, expansive lead single from (watch my moves), the singer/songwriter and master guitarist’s forthcoming ninth solo studio album. Like Exploding Stones elegantly unfurls over the course of seven minutes, on a mission to lower the listener’s blood pressure the whole way.

Standout guitar moment: Dreamy, unhurried and simple as it is, the money comes between the lines of Like Exploding Stones. Vile’s twangy whammy bar work, lurching bends and ever-immaculate use of modulation will give you something new to love about this tune every time you return to it. 

For fans of: The War on Drugs, Real Estate, Tame Impala 

– Jackson Maxwell

Amon Amarth – Put Your Back Into the Oar

What is it? Staying true to their Viking metal roots, Swedish melodic death metal stalwarts Amon Amarth have issued a clarion call with unrelenting new track, Put Your Back Into the Oar. Savage from the offset, the track is thrust forward by the guitars, and packed with so much macho bravado it’ll make your beard grow several inches in five minutes.

Standout guitar moment: The riff that accompanies the chants of “Row! Row!” is fittingly uplifting, and reflective of the track’s rousing subject matter.

For fans of: Arch Enemy, Wintersun, Dimmu Borgir

– Sam Roche

Robin Trower – No More Worlds To Conquer 

What is it? The lead single and title track from Trower’s upcoming LP, which will arrive April 29. “With every album, it’s the best I can do at that particular time,” teased the former Procol Harum guitarist, who has recruited drummer Chris Taggard and vocalist Richard Watts for the forthcoming effort. With this single, it’s clear that Trower’s tasteful chops are still up there with the very best, evident from those clean intro lines and the chunky fingerpicking motifs.

Standout guitar moment: Trower’s nonchalant noodlings – concocted via the timeless combo of a Fender Stratocaster and Marshall amp – are faultless throughout, but the beefy, bend-heavy solo at the 2:30 mark is certainly worth shouting about.

For fans of: Robben Ford, Rory Gallagher

– Matt Owen

Animals As Leaders – Gordian Naught

What is it? The latest slice of unsurpassable prog-metal from Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes, and perhaps the pair’s most brutal offering yet from the upcoming Parrhesia. Produced by Periphery juggernaut Misha Mansoor, Gordian Naught is a total head-trip from start to finish, traversing chin-scratching time signatures with fluid ease. The arrangement is crushing, the tones are simply staggering, and if there’s a better pull-off riff this year, we’d love to hear it.

Standout guitar moment: The frenetic eight-string exchange that guides the track’s breakdown at the two-and-a-half-minute mark: Abasi and Reyes’ ability to choose the most sinister notes imaginable strikes again, all delivered with typically death-defying technique.

For fans of: Periphery, Meshuggah, Monuments

– Michael Astley-Brown

Tomberlin – happy accident

What is it? The second single from Sarah Beth Tomberlin’s highly-anticipated sophomore full-length album, i don’t know who needs to hear this…, happy accident gets a big-time boost from guest guitarist Cass McCombs.

Standout guitar moment: Hearing Tomberlin’s phenomenal songwriting set against a canvas of her and McCombs’ shoegazey, dual-guitar interplay is thrilling, particularly when one veers off-course for some textural, noisy outbursts while the other holds the fort down with the song’s beautifully charred main riff.   

For fans of: Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers, Big Thief  

– Jackson Maxwell

Joe Traxler – Forget How To Speak 

What is it? The latest single from Austrian indie-rock guitarist, producer and singer-songwriter Joe Traxler. With a fundamental sonic tonality akin to that of John Mayer – peep the Half of My Heart-esque chorus turnaround – though with a healthy dose of his own DNA, Traxler’s writing chops once again come up trumps, as does his selective, spectrum-spanning appreciation of guitar tones.

Standout guitar moment: It’s got to be the tones. Traxler clearly adopts an expansive approach in Forget How To Speak, offering an array of gorgeous six-string sounds, from the pristine opening acoustics and slinky double-tracked electrics all the way to the space-y interlude licks.

For fans: John Mayer, The 1975

– Matt Owen

Three Days Grace – Neurotic (feat. Lukas Rossi)

What is it? A new track from Canadian rock outfit Three Days Grace, in association with Rock Star Supernova frontman Lukas Rossi. The track – which arrives ahead of the band’s forthcoming album, Explosions, out May 6 – has that quintessential NWOAHM sound of the early 2000s, led by a massive electric guitar riff and effortlessly catchy vocal hooks.

Standout guitar moment: The main guitar riff – in the intro and after the choruses – is simple yet crushing, and drenched in undeniably satisfying fuzz.

For fans of: Breaking Benjamin, Shinedown, Papa Roach

– Sam Roche

FES – Clarinet

What is it? A belter of a single from one of the most exhilarating math-pop bands to emerge from the UK in recent years. Tele-toting FES leader Pollyanna Holland-Wing marries the kind of dreamy extended chords you’d expect to find in Midwest emo with an irresistible progressive edge – think Covet meets Paramore and you’ll have a pretty good idea.

Standout guitar moment: Obligatory ‘check out the sick tapping at 2:53’ comment – and it really is sick – but the whole track is awash with gorgeous guitar tones and ethereal delay textures.

For fans of: TTNG, Covet, Paramore

– Michael Astley-Brown

The Dip – Real Contender 

What is it? A new single from seven-piece ensemble project The Dip, which harnesses an old-school style and pairs it with a contemporary indie-rock flair. Real Contender is a fitting introduction to their repertoire: the smooth six-strings form a foundation for the flavorful chord progression, and dance away underneath the track’s big band instrumentation.

Standout guitar moment: There’s some really nice two-part interplay going on in the verses. While one deals with the customary high-register snaps, the other tinkles away on some descending melody lines.

For fans of: Theo Katzman, Parcels, Cassette Deck 

– Matt Owen

Instrumental prog-metallers Animals As Leaders have dropped Gordian Naught, the third single from their forthcoming fifth studio album, Parrhesia.

The track – which follows two previously released singles Monomyth and The Problem of Other Minds – is as technically intricate, mind-bendingly chaotic and time signature-fluid as you'd expect from the Washington DC three-piece, packed with out-of-this-world electric guitar playing from Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes.

While there are some sublime upper-register runs, the lower strings of the duo's eight-strings are the real stars of the show here. Not only are those rapid-fire slapped lines unfathomably precise, but the tone is as thick as realistically possible without endangering speaker systems. Check it out below.

Due out March 25 via Sumerian Records, Parrhesia is Animals As Leaders' first full-length offering in over five years, following 2016's The Madness of Many. Its track list can be found below.

1. Conflict Cartography
2. Monomyth
3. Red Miso
4. Gesaltzerfall
5. Asahi
6. The Problem Of Other Minds
7. Thoughts And Prayers
8. Micro-Aggressions
9. Gordian Night

“It’s been a while since we’ve released a body of work,” Abasi says. “We’re really proud of this collection of songs as well as the visual components, and are excited to share it with all of you.”

Last month, AAL announced a 19-date US tour in support of the record, which will take place in March and April this year. Commencing at Denver's Summit Music Hall on March 30, the run will stop in Chicago, Detroit, New York and more, before wrapping up at LA's Theater At The Ace Hotel on April 22.

Those lucky enough to watch the band play on the tour will no doubt see Tosin Abasi in fine form. Back in November, before the album was officially announced, Abasi showed he's sharper than ever with a fiery playthrough of Monomyth, which he delivered using his eight-string Abasi Concepts Master Series Larada.

Commenting on the track at the time, Abasi noted that it was composed primarily on the drums first by Matt Garstka, and the guitar was added afterwards. “Writing this way can be a fun challenge and the musical result can be fresh,” he said.

Animals As Leaders have announced they’ll be hitting the road throughout March and April this year in support of their upcoming album, Parrhesia.

The Parrhesia US tour will notably feature two sets per night: one comprising tracks from the band’s pre-existing repertoire, and another that will see the prog-metal heavyweights perform their forthcoming studio effort in full.

Kicking off at Denver’s Summit Music Hall on March 30, Animals As Leaders will visit 19 cities while on the Live Nation-produced tour, and will conclude their trip round the country on April 22 at LA’s Theater At The Ace Hotel.

In between these shows, they will play two runs of six consecutive nights throughout April, visiting cities such as Kansas, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Atlanta.

Tickets for the tour will go on general sale on January 21 at 10am from Animals As Leaders’ official website.

Headed up by electric guitar titans Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes, Animals As Leaders will release Parrhesia – their first new material in more than half a decade since 2016’s The Madness Of Many – on March 25 via Sumerian Records.

They’ve prefaced the release of Parrhesia so far by sharing two singles, The Problem Of Many and Monomyth, the latter of which was subsequently the subject of a scorching playthrough from Abasi.

A full list of dates for the Parrhesia tour can be found below.

• Mar 30 - Denver, CO @ Summit Music Hall
• Apr 1 - Kansas City, MO @ Truman Theater*
• Apr 2 - Omaha, NE @ Slowdown*
• Apr 3 - Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theater
• Apr 4 - Chicago, IL @ House of Blues
• Apr 5 - Cincinnati, OH @ Bogarts
• Apr 6 - Detroit, MI @ St. Andrews Hall
• Apr 8 - Hampton Beach, NH @ Wally's*
• Apr 9 - Lititz, PA @ Mickey's Black Box*
• Apr 10 - New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
• Apr 11 - Philadelphia, PA @ Brooklyn Bowl
• Apr 12 - Boston, MA @ Big Night Live
• Apr 13 - Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Soundstage
• Apr 15 - Atlanta, GA @ Buckhead Theatre
• Apr 16 - Orlando, FL @ House of Blues
• Apr 18 - Dallas, TX @ House of Blues
• Apr 19 - Austin, TX @ Emo's
• Apr 21 - Phoenix, AZ @ Marquee Theater*
• Apr 22 - Los Angeles, CA @ Theater At The Ace Hotel

ESP has announced a trio of new LTD signature guitars for Goatwhore's Sammy Duet, Of Mice & Men's Alan Ashby and Animals As Leaders' Javier Reyes.

Duet's new sig is the LTD SD-2, a recreation of his own ESP Custom Shop model, which sports ESP's Random Star shape. In terms of specs, the guitar boasts a mahogany body and a three-piece mahogany neck with a neck-through construction, a 350mm-radius Macassar ebony fingerboard with 24 XJ frets, diamond-shaped mother-of-pearl inlays and glow-in-the-dark side markers, and a Floyd Rose 1000 SE double-locking tremolo.

Electronics include a single Seymour Duncan Blackout active humbucking pickup – which ESP says provides the “hot, articulate response necessary for modern metal” – controlled via a single volume knob. Price-wise, this one retails at $1,499.

Next up is Alan Ashby's new model, the LTD AA-1. An update of the OM&M guitarist's previous Signature Series model, this one adds a Black Satin finish complete with gold hardware, and features a T-style mahogany body and three-piece mahogany neck with a neck-through build, 24-fret Macassar ebony fingerboard with no inlays, and a single EMG 81 active humbucker in the bridge position, brushed gold to remain in keeping with the guitar's aesthetic.

ESP says this guitar has “sustain for days”, thanks to its TonePros locking TOM bridge and string-through body design. This one's priced at $1,299.

Finally, there's Javier Reyes' new LTD JR-7. A seven-string iteration of his 27" signature ESP baritone guitar, the JR-7 sports a swamp ash body with a quilted maple top, 5-piece walnut/maple/padauk neck, Macassar ebony fingerboard and a 27" scale length.

Other components include a Hipshot bridge with a string-through design, and a pair of Reyes' signature Fishman Open Core humbucking pickups, controlled via a single volume and tone knobs, a five-way selector switch and a mini toggle for voice selection. This one'll set you back $1,999.

For more information on these new signature models, head to ESP.

Folks in the States will soon be gathered around voluminous plates of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie and such. But that’s for next Thursday. 

For this Thursday, we’ve got a blood pressure-lowering ambient-jazz odyssey from Jeff Parker, a feast of light-speed bluegrass pickin’ from Molly Tuttle, an EDM and hip-hop-tinged crusher from We Came As Romans, a grungy, insanely catchy number from Momma, and a whole lot more.

So, before you – if you celebrate – tuck into your Thanksgiving feast, tuck into these tasty new tunes.

Jeff Parker – Suffolk

It’s beyond cliche to say of an artist: ‘they never let themselves get painted into a box.’ If that used-to-death description could ever be applied to just one guitarist though, it might be Jeff Parker. 

Whether playing with Tortoise, in a session, leading his own group, or playing solo, Parker brings with him an ingenious sense of space and a delicate melodic touch.

Suffolk – the lead single from his upcoming album of solo guitar compositions, Forfolks – is similarly borderless in scope, a beautifully freewheeling, guitar-driven expression of joy and musical exploration. 

Built on a series of tape loops and light, airy keyboard drones, Suffolk is chock full of gorgeous improvised playing. There’s some bebop spunk in the looped guitar figure that gives the song its restless, frontier-pushing drive and classic jazz elegance in the chords and some of the lead lines, with the freeform spirit of more experimental influences never too far away. 

With its unhurried pace and quiet demeanor, Suffolk really sneaks up on you as a masterpiece of improvisation. Come for the tranquility, stay to lose yourself in the piece’s many, hypnotic layers of guitar. (JM)

Animals As Leaders – The Problem of Other Minds

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a fix of new Animals As Leaders, and while Monomyth went some way towards alleviating fans's impatience earlier this year, today’s announcement that the celebrated prog metal trio will be releasing their first album in five years next March was enthusiastically received.

The Problem of Other Minds, the second single to be taken from Parrhesia, has somehow succeeded in making a further five-month wait bearable. Spearheaded by Tosin Abasi’s sought-after lead tones and propped up by an unrelenting arpeggiated synth, the three-piece make their way through two-and-a-half minutes of sheer prog bliss.

Delivering the best of what they have to offer – melodic percussion passages, selectively assembled solos, meaty chugs and kaleidoscopic backline soundscapes – Animals As Leaders sound as though they’re on a mission to make the pay-off worth a five-year wait, and we’re already well on the way to being won over by the rhythmically intriguing, deliciously assembled single.

Parrhesia has all the makings of a fierce album, albeit one that requires a little more waiting before its eventual arrival. But heck, after patiently waiting for five years, these next five months will be a breeze… we hope. (MO)

We Came As Romans – Daggers (feat. Zero 9:36)

Rap over metal is a combination we’ve seen work time and time again – think any nu-metal heavyweight: Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, Linkin Park – but on their latest single, Daggers, We Came As Romans offer up their own take on this tried and tested genre blend.

A certified pit-spinner, Daggers kicks off with a crushing riff courtesy of guitarists Joshua Moore and Lou Cotton, and a subsequent pummeling verse and chorus section driven by vocalist David Stephens, before Pennsylvania-born rapper Zero 9:36 adds a verse-long injection of hip-hop/nu metal into the mix.

This one is unrelenting, and we can’t wait to see the Michigan metalcore outfit take it to the stage on their upcoming 2022 tour with Senses Fail. (SR)

Momma - Medicine

One of nouveau grunge’s best-kept secrets, Momma have been quietly building a formidable catalog of sweet-and-sour guitar anthems, and the New York outfit’s latest single – and first for Polyvinyl Record Co./Lucky Number Music – maintains that upward momentum.

Medicine once again showcases the sparkling arpeggiated guitar interplay between Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten, but elevates their core sound to new heights with a sky-scraping, downstroke-driven chorus that signals towards big things. (MAB)

Molly Tuttle – She’ll Change 

Owing to her double-helping of cover efforts last year, it’s been a while – almost two years, to be precise – since we’ve heard any original material from Molly Tuttle. That was until today, when the acoustic-playing virtuoso dropped She’ll Change – an energetic two-and-a-half minute bluegrass masterpiece.

With the support of a who’s who of Nashville musicians, Tuttle takes the opportunity to pay homage to “the musical women who helped me find my own voice”, and does so in immense fashion. It’s a Tuttle track, which means the inclusion of awe-inspiring guitar work is a given, though the uptempo nature, paired with the unblemished acoustic tones, makes for one unmissable listening experience.

Listen carefully, and you’ll hear the strings bounce off the ‘board to deliver devastating undertones, while Tuttle plows undeterred into a barrage of rapid-fire licks and melodies, as well as an extended solo populated entirely with impeccably articulated notes.

There is more than one reason to get excited about She’ll Change, though, aside from the bounty of top-notch fretboard work. It is, in fact, the first track to be lifted from Tuttle’s upcoming studio album – her debut with Nonesuch Records – which will arrive early next year. (MO)

Temperance – Diamanti

The three tracks released from their forthcoming LP so far – Pure Life Unfolds, Breaking the Rules of Heavy Metal and now Diamanti – showcase the next stage of evolution for Italian symphonic metal stalwarts Temperance.

The latter track – released earlier this week – is infused with the same enthralling grandeur as heard on the group’s previous album, 2020’s Viridian, with mesmerizingly illustrative string sections and a huge-sounding powerchords from resident six-stringer Marco Pastorino.

Diamanti, at times, plays like a metal-inspired film score – one which would accompany a valiant hero saving the world, naturally. And if so, the breakdown at the 3:05 mark – in which Pastorino participates in a massive call-and-response phrase with the string section – would accompany a carefully choreographed fight between the hero and their nemesis. At least that’s how we hear it. (SR)

Me and That Man – Under the Spell

Those unfamiliar with Me and That Man’s work might be surprised by the sound of Nergal’s side project. The band – which the Polish musician fronts when he’s not tearing up stages and spitting fake blood at crowds with extreme metal titans Behemoth – have just released their latest single, Under the Spell.

Infused with the twangy clean guitar sounds of classic Americana, this track sees Nergal recruit Ghost frontman Tobias Forge, who performs under an age-old moniker of his, Mary Goore.

Forge – who apparently described a rough mix of the track as having a “rockabilly/Motörhead king of vibe” – invited Nergal to his personal studio in Sweden to record the track. And the rest, Nergal says, is history. (SR)

Jamie Lenman - Television Is Not Your Life

Formerly of perennially underrated alt-rockers Reuben, Jamie Lenman is something of a cult hero in his native UK, and for his latest one-off single, set himself the bold task of live-looping a track, in-studio, on all instruments, in one take. Cue some ingenious pedal-operated tambourine and cymbal work and quick-fire instrument swaps.

It’s a maverick move, but Lenman’s ambition is anchored by his ever-reliable quick wit and chunky drop-D riffs, performed on his trademark Yamaha Pacifica and, surprisingly, an Ibanez Paul Gilbert Fireman. (MAB)

After months of teasing and more than five years of waiting, Animals As Leaders have finally announced that their new album, Parrhesia, is set to arrive next year.

Due March 25 via Sumerian Records, Parrhesia will be the prog-metal outfit’s first new full-length offering in half a decade, and will follow 2016’s The Madness Of Many.

It’s been a long wait for Animals As Leaders fans, but the band have softened the blow of a further five-month wait by dropping a new track, The Problem of Other Minds, which will join up with the recently released Monomyth.

In just two-and-a-half minutes, Tosin Abasi and his bandmates – drummer Matt Garstka and guitarist Javier Reyes – demonstrate why they are at the forefront of the prog-metal scene. An arpeggiated synth whets the appetite, and canters along at speed underneath some melodic electric guitar counterpoint licks and melodic percussion.

As always, Abasi’s Neural DSP-powered lead tone is to die for, playing host to a subtle blues-esque slide that precedes some sublime soloing and meaty chugs. 

There’s a fair amount of rhythmic intrigue in there, too, thanks to some rolling lead licks that glide across shifting time signatures.

Accompanying the track is an official music video directed by Telavaya Reynolds, who also joined forces with the band for Monomyth's music video.

Of the effort, Abasi commented, “It’s been a while since we’ve released a body of work. We’re really proud of this collection of songs as well as the visual components, and are excited to share it with all of you.”

The tracklist for Parrhesia can be found below.

1. Conflict Cartography
2. Monomyth
3. Red Miso
4. Gesaltzerfall
5. Asahi
6. The Problem Of Other Minds
7. Thoughts And Prayers
8. Micro-Aggressions
9. Gordian Night

Parrhesia has been a long time coming. In August, Abasi shared a tap-heavy teaser clip and declared Animals As Leaders had finished tracking their at-the-time untitled album.

More recently, the trio dropped Monomyth – the first single to be taken from Parrhesia – which was followed by a scorching playthrough courtesy of Tosin Abasi and his eight-string Abasi Concepts Master Series Larada.

• Parrhesia is available to preorder now ahead of its March 25 release.

Earlier this year, celebrated prog-metal outfit Animals As Leaders released their first new track in five years, Monomyth, and now electric guitar titan Tosin Abasi has released an awe-inspiring playthrough of the chug-heavy track.

Using his Abasi Concepts Master Series Larada 8-string, Abasi once again delivers a reminder of why he is currently considered one of guitar’s leading instrumentalists. 

The off-kilter intro chugs, which alone would be enough to make the faint of heart trip over their strings, are immaculately delivered, while the preliminary string-skipping solo passages are executed with surgical precision.

His tone, which comes courtesy of the revamped Neural DSP: Abasi 2.0.0 plugin, is as gritty as ever, though at the same time is packed full of clarity for those intricate lead lines, which crop up throughout the hypnotic rendition.

Technique-wise, it’s a triumph. With a guitar pick in hand, Abasi is able to summon up a series of elite hybrid picking lines – with the aid of his third finger – and fretboard-spanning solo passages littered with blitzing scale runs.

Speaking on social media, Abasi commented, “Interesting note about this song is that it was composed primarily on the drums first by Matt [Garstka] with the guitar added afterwards. Writing this way can be a fun challenge and the musical result can [be] fresh!”

When it dropped, Monomyth was the band’s first new offering since 2016’s The Madness Of Many, and the first single to be released since the band announced a new deal with their current label, the independent Sumerian Records.

“Monomyth is part fever dream, part ritual. Its imagery represents man's ceaseless attempts to translate transcendent ideas into movement,” Abasi said of the track at the time. “The conflation of struggle with meaning,” he continued. “Pain with significance. The ultimate failure of distilling perceived patterns in the world into knowledge."

All the tones heard in the Monomyth playthrough can be accessed as presets in Neural DSP: Abasi 2.0.0.

The end of summer, believe it or not, is rapidly approaching. Though the arrival of September does mark the end of beach season, it also heralds the beginning of fall release season, and its accompanying rush of exciting new music.

From the tunes we’ve heard in recent days, it seems that the fall of 2021 is going to be just as thrilling for those hungry for guitar innovation as the year’s previous seasons. 

Animals As Leaders are back with an unrelenting piece of high-gain prog, Johnny Marr’s wielding a nine-pickup Strat to glorious effect on a new "electro soul anthem,” The Velveteers are – with some help from Dan Auerbach – keeping go-for-the-throat garage rock alive, while Fantastic Negrito brings topical fire to a breezy country structure on Rolling Through California.

It’s a lot to take in, and that’s not even the half of it – so don’t waste another second! Dive on in, and hear the guitar greatness that awaits.

Animals As Leaders – Monomyth 

The Tosin Abasi-led prog-metal outfit returned from their unofficial musical hiatus this week, releasing their first new music in half a decade in the form of the brutally unrelenting epic, Monomyth – and Animals As Leaders fans will be pleased to hear it was totally worth the wait.

Rather than throwing us face first into a flurry of rapid-fire notes and bombarding us with a barrage of densely packed chugs, the trio instead take the opportunity toy with us a little more, building the anticipation and heightening our senses via some sporadic strums and pounding kick-drum passages.

It’s not long before the track breaks away into the first of its many mosaic-like passages, which are ultimately joined together with a sublime sonic glue that merges Abasi’s otherworldly, ever-sustaining lead tone and snappy low-string stabs into one oversized tapestry of prog-metal perfection.

Keep your eyes and ears peeled, folks, because if this new single – and Abasi’s recent Instagram tease – is anything to go by, a new Animals As Leaders album is just around the corner. Plus, if Monomyth is a sign of things to come, you’re not going to want to miss it. (MO)

Black Label Society – Set You Free

The first track from Black Label Society’s forthcoming record Doom Crew Inc. – which is due out November 26 – Set You Free sees the Zakk Wylde-led quartet deliver a track that metamorphosizes beyond all expectation over the course of its near-four-minute runtime.

While the song commences with a Stairway to Heaven-like arpeggiated acoustic guitar passage, it quickly reminds us who’s playing it, when Wylde and co enter the fray with a stomping distorted guitar-driven section. 

The track makes many winding stylistic turns throughout its course, culminating with a mind-bending dose of dual lead work from Wylde and co-guitarist Dario Lorina.

And there’s to be plenty more where that came from. “It really, truly is a two-guitar album, more so than ever,” Wylde promises. (SR)

Johnny Marr – Spirit, Power and Soul

The fact that – other than his career-defining role crafting some of the 20th century’s most rich, quietly complex and gorgeous guitar riffs with The Smiths – Johnny Marr has managed to slot himself into bands as musically diverse as Modest Mouse, The Cribs, The Pretenders and The The is a testament to his versatility and skill as a guitarist.

No matter what the song calls for, Marr knows how to craft the perfect part, so it’s unsurprising that even when he’s looking to create an "electro soul anthem" in the form of Spirit, Power and Soul – the first single from his upcoming double album, Fever Dreams Pts 1-4 – his playing is still a tonal revelation.

Wielding an incredible-looking custom Strat with nine (yes, nine, with 18 switches to boot!) single-coil pickups, Marr makes the opening arpeggio ring out like a commandment from the heavens, likewise with the song’s brilliantly simple lead break.

We can’t wait to see what else Fever Dreams Pts 1-4 (and that guitar, for that matter) have in store for us. (JM)

The Velveteers – Motel #27

If Queens of the Stone Age and L7 got into a bar fight, the result would probably sound a lot like The Velveteers, the Denver-based three-piece whose raucous performances recently attracted the attention of Dan Auerbach – who became such a fan that he ended producing the band’s forthcoming debut album, Nightmare Daydream.

The Black Keys mastermind’s sonic footprint is all over Motel #27 – and not just because of guitarist/singer Demi Demitro’s pawn-shop offset. No, this is a garage-rock banger with the kind of fuzzed-up tones Auerbach has been honing on record for decades.

But far more importantly, the track oozes attitude. Demitro – who spent up to nine hours a day woodshedding as a teen – doesn’t so much swipe at her guitar as stab it, and that makes her playing just as exciting whether she’s engaging in pitch-shifted leads or hammering out a single chord. The Velveteers deliver rock in its rawest, most primordial form – they’re going to be huge. (MAB)

Dragged Under – Brainwash Broadcast

Taking direct aim at the “media sensationalism that we endure everyday”, Seattle metallers Dragged Under have teamed up with Underoath’s Spencer Chamberlain to issue a brand-new standalone track, Brainwash Broadcast.

Kicking off with a killer electric guitar riff courtesy of Ryan “Fluff” Bruce – of Riffs, Beards & Gear YouTube channel fame – the track quickly blossoms into a fast-paced ADTR-style punk-hard-rock number, wrought with plenty of gain-heavy guitar-centric breakdowns and carefully crafted vocal harmonies. (SR)

Davy Knowles – Roll Me 

Roll Me – the second single from roots singer-songwriter Davy Knowles’s upcoming album, What Happens Next – boasts an abundance of just about everything you could hope to find from a soulful, blues-drenched, guitar-driven number.

A three-note lick from a snarling electric guitar armed with a heavyset tremolo effect and we’re away, with Knowles guiding us through the track via his almost-hypnotic vocals, recurring gain-y snaps and melodic flourishes. His PRS isn’t wholly resigned to the rhythm section, though, and tentatively awakens from its solo-less slumber to deliver some expertly crafted phrases.

Of the track, which was written by Knowles’s producer Eric Corne, the guitarist says, “as soon as I heard it, I related to it and knew I wanted to record it. It was great to push myself out of my comfort zone and I couldn’t be more pleased with how it turned out.”

Smooth tones, easy going vocals, a swelling mid-section and a sumptuously selected guitar solo… What more could you possibly want from an end-of-week essential track? (MO)

Buffalo Nichols – Back on Top

Milwaukee, Wisconsin native Buffalo Nichols recently became venerated indie/blues label Fat Possum Records’ first solo blues signing in almost 20 years. Next month, the company will release his self-titled debut album – so, what sets this singer, songwriter and guitarist that far apart?

The premise of his debut’s second single, Back on Top, is familiar enough. Our protagonist “ain’t got a dime left” for the object of his affection, but once he’s got some money, the duo will “live like a king and queen.”

Nichols is a man on a mission though, and injects this age-old thematic backdrop with an urgency and skill – compositionally and vocally – that shows exactly why he’s got even the most seasoned of blues fans excited. 

Nichols’ sweet-as-honey slide work on the song is absolutely impeccable – matching the excitability, charisma and underdog charm of the song’s narrator beat-for-beat, while locking perfectly into the song’s sumptuous groove. 

Anyone who fears the blues’ demise would do well to keep their eyes on Nichols – with guitarists like him carrying the torch and moving the genre into the 21st century, the blues’ll be just fine. (JM)

Juan Antonio – The Science Fair

You might remember Berklee International professor Juan Antonio from his lessons on how to capture the essence of Steve Vai and Plini in your playing – and it appears he’s certainly internalized those techniques for the first single from his forthcoming EP, Sublimation.

The Science Fair takes its cues from prog – check out the piano and orchestral instrumentation – but Juan Antonio’s melodic sensibility and dynamic playing style are sure to appeal to anyone who thinks the genre favors technicality over feel. And the way that middle-eight solo alchemizes a wealth of lead approaches into solid gold is pure guitar magic. A+! (MAB)

Fantastic Negrito – Rolling Through California

In the wake of climate change and the challenges presented by California’s annual fire season, three-time Grammy winner Fantastic Negrito has joined forces with Bay Area singer songwriter Miko Marks for a refreshingly genre-fluid number, Rolling Through California.

Incorporating silky country-style slide guitar, soulful vocal harmonies and bluesy electric piano leads, Rolling Through California is an uplifting cut which further illustrates Fantastic Negrito’s impressively malleable musical style.

“I remember waking up to an apocalyptic sky,” Fantastic Negrito says. “The sky was orange, the sun looked bloodshot and people’s anxiety levels were very high. It felt and looked like doomsday. It really made me think about climate change and the environment – how our actions impact where we live and the choices we make.”

A portion of the song’s proceeds will be donated to Defy:Disaster, which aims to provide both immediate and long-term disaster relief. (SR)

Marissa Nadler – Bessie, Did You Make It?

For this writer’s money, other than maybe Nick Cave, no-one on Earth is better equipped to write a gothic murder ballad – or flip one on its head – than Marissa Nadler.

A phenomenal acoustic fingerstylist, Nadler is a master of shaping a narrative and building tension with her playing, and that’s exactly what she does on Bessie, Did You Make It?, the haunting lead single and track from her upcoming album, The Path of the Clouds.

Written during the early stages of the pandemic, this Western ghost story of sorts comes alive beautifully at the hands of Nadler’s driving fingerpicking, a lush orchestral arrangement and Nadler’s crisply matter-of-fact vocals.

Bessie, Did You Make It? feels like a tale you heard long ago at a sleepover, at a campfire, or from an old relative – timeless and forever embedded into your head, there to comfort or spook you in equal measure. (JM)

Me and That Man – Got Your Tongue (feat. Chris Georgiadis) 

Behemoth member Adam 'Nergal' Darski was back in action with his ominous blues-funk-fusion-esque group Me and That Man this week, returning with a bang thanks to the group’s newest heavy-riffing romp, Got Your Tongue.

Enlisting the help of Chris Georgiadis of Turbowolf, Got Your Tongue adopts a no-holds-barred sonic approach that blasts listeners with an immediate, in-your-face gain-heavy riff that gallops along without reprieve, save the stripped-back refrains.

And for those hoping for a solo, you're in luck, as the closing 30 seconds gives Darski ample opportunity to break away from the track’s mainstream riff and let loose on a rapid-fire lead passage that closes the track out in a show-stopping burst of frantic, rock-heavy energy. 

A timely, rock 'n' roll-fueled pre-weekend pick-me-up if ever there was one. (MO)

Progessive metal titans Animals As Leaders have made their long-awaited return to the music scene, sharing their first new single since 2016, Monomyth.

The track itself – the newest offering since the band’s last studio album, The Madness Of Many – is everything that eager Leaders fans could have hoped for, dialing up the anticipation to almost unbearable levels before serving up a sublimely sweet pay off.

Headed up by Tosin Abasi’s exquisite high-gain tone, Javier Reyes’s unrelenting rhythms and Matt Garstka’s pounding kick-heavy foundations, Monomyth opts for a tense opening that will have your hairs standing on end, whittling off sporadic chugs that precede an intricate melodic motif.

In what is certain to go straight into the playbook of Animals As Leaders songs that every keen electric guitar player will strive to learn note-for-note, Abasi then plugs into his celebrated Neural DSP-sponsored tone for a wailing, tastefully assembled lead exchange.

Accompanying the single is an ominously curated music video directed by Telavaya Reynolds, which features the choreography of Tlathui Maza and the Nohbords dance group, whose hypnotic physical movements coalesce with the uncompromising high-gain barrage.

Of the track, Abasi commented, “Monomyth is part fever dream, part ritual. Its imagery represents man's ceaseless attempts to translate transcendent ideas into movement. 

“The conflation of struggle with meaning,” he continued. “Pain with significance. The ultimate failure of distilling perceived patterns in the world into knowledge."

Ushering in the epic single is the news that the band have also signed a new deal with their current label, the independent Sumerian Records.

Though there has been no official word regarding a new album from the band just yet, Monomyth is likely to feature on an upcoming yet-to-be-announced record, a theory supported by Abasi’s recent Instagram tease.

“Finished tracking everything for the next Animals As Leaders album last night!” he shared, while flexing his two-hand tapping skills in a quick-fire sneak-peek clip.

That’s all we have to go on for the time being, unfortunately, though we’ll bring you more Animals As Leaders news as it comes in. In the meantime, Monomyth is sure to quench our prog-metal thirst… for now, at least.

One of music’s most beloved YouTubers and educators, Rick Beato, has shared a modern guitar summit with three of today’s most influential guitarists, Tosin Abasi, Tim Henson and Misha Mansoor.

The foursome’s 40-minute discussion – which you can watch below – is a fascinating overview of guitar’s position in modern music, but it contains one surprise admission in particular that really got the conversation flowing.

During an opening discussion of artists selling out, Metallica – and, naturally, their haircuts – comes up. Yet when Abasi brings up the subject of artists compromising their music to be more popular, Beato poses the question, “Did Metallica do that on the Black Album?”

Mansoor is quick to shoot down the suggestion, before Henson responds, “I’ve never heard it” – a revelation that results in sheer disbelief from his fellow conversationalists.

Upon further inquisition, Henson does admit to having heard Enter Sandman – although not Nothing Else Matters or Sad But True – and his favorite Metallica riff is… Some Kind of Monster. He even likes the St. Anger snare.

“My dad wasn’t a Metallica fan – that’s why I’ve never heard it,” Henson explains. “I started on playing the things that my dad showed me, so that’s what I fell in love with: Hendrix and Black Sabbath.”

Beato, Abasi and Mansoor do propose Henson puts out a reaction video to his first listen of the album, however, so there’s hope that he may yet experience Hetfield and Hammett’s chart-smashing masterpiece.

Henson is one of today’s most forward-thinking guitar players, not just in terms of playing and technique, but also tone and composition, and his idiosyncratic style eschews many traditional “boomer-ish” guitar conventions.

Given their supreme influence on the next generation of players, it’s a kinship you’d think all three players shared, but as it turns out, that’s not quite the case.

Later in the discussion, Abasi posits, “I think everyone in these chairs right now feels a sense of a need to contribute something new to the canon of music.”

“I disagree with you,” Mansoor responds. “I don’t care about being original. I’m chasing something much more selfish, which is abstract, but I know when I reach it. It’s just something that feels a certain way. Originality is a byproduct, and it was never a concern. I was ripping off Meshuggah before it was cool.”

We know we lured you in with the headline, but we would thoroughly recommend watching the 40-minute discussion in its entirety, as it spans a number of fascinating subjects, including fear of music theory, the democratization of music instrumentation and production, and Tosin Abasi’s first experience hearing Mansoor’s original Bulb material (on MySpace, natch).

Tosin Abasi, guitarist with progressive metal innovators Animals As Leaders, has confirmed the group have finished tracking their fifth album. 

The guitarist broke the news via Instagram, sharing a brief clip of the last guitar part he was recording. The clip teases a pretty intense tap-happy track with Abasi showcasing one of his Abasi Concepts instruments – a J Larada in Capri Orange – in the process.

Details about the new Animals As Leaders record are still pretty light on the ground, but it will represent their first studio album since 2016’s The Madness Of Many. 

Abasi has posted a few brief clips of new demos online across the past year, but appears to have been keeping busy with his Abasi Concepts brand, recently releasing the Tele-inspired Space T range.

Meanwhile, Javier Reyes has composed music for The Relentless – the fictional band (featuring Andy Biersack and Ben Bruce) at the heart of streaming series Paradise City. 

Animals As Leaders also hosted a one-off streaming event in July 2020, performing seven tracks, including Arithmophobia, Ectogenesis, Tooth and Claw and Physical Education.

Abasi Concepts – the company behind some of the most futuristic, ergonomic electric guitars currently around – has treated its celebrated range of Space T models to an array of new-for-2021 colorways.

Not only that, the brand – set up by Animals As Leaders guitarist Tosin Abasi – has introduced a collection of fresh wood choices new to the catalog, which will be used for the bodies, necks and fretboards.

Build-wise, the brand’s new-look guitars boast an assortment of okume and sugar pine bodies, which aim to achieve both a lightweight playability and a bright, resonant character. Other functional appointments found in the range include roasted maple necks, and a choice of either Richlite or birdseye maple fretboards.

Abasi Concepts has pulled no punches in the aesthetic department, either, and has introduced to the fold a handful of vintage-inspired pastel colors, as well as an array of bold, modern finishes.

Lining up alongside the more eye-catching Pink Sparkle and Champagne finishes are the elegant Violinburst, Miami Blue and Black Raven tones. Other colorways in the smartly stylized collection include Sapphire Red, Arctic White and Solarbeam Yellow.

Further features found on the spec sheet include a set of Greg Koch signature Fishman Fluence pickups, tweakable via a conventional Tele-esque control layout composed of a three-way switch, master volume and master tone knob, and a Wilkinson Three-Saddle T-style bridge.

Elsewhere, whereas the original Space Ts had nickel fretwire, all of the new-and-improved iterations will also come equipped with 22 stainless steel frets.

Turns out, these suave new six-strings sound just as good as they look, having been put through their paces by blues guitar icon Josh Smith and Periphery wizard Misha Mansoor.

In a pair of posts, the two guitar gurus can be seen wielding the Champagne and Miami Blue models, respectively, using them to maximum effect as they make their way up and down the fretboard.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen a modern blues player go to town on one of Abasi’s space-age instruments – Gary Clark Jr. tried a Cheddar Space T on for size at a gig last year. 

Unfortunately, the Abasi Concepts official website lists most of its new products as being out of stock. Not to worry, though, for there are still a number of Sapphire Red models, equipped with a Richlite fretboard, up for grabs.

These currently list for $3,499.

For more information, head over to Abasi Concepts.

Picture this: Tosin Abasi and Misha Mansoor standing in a garage surrounded by old car parts with the smell of gas hanging heavy in the air, electric guitars in hand.

What are they playing, you ask? Perhaps they're trading lines on an Animals for Leaders song? Or maybe they're tearing through a Periphery track?

No. They're playing Jessica by The Allman Brothers.

If fan Devin Walker has anything to say about it, what we just described could become a reality, as he launches a petition to get the guitar gurus on as special guest hosts of motor show Top Gear.

Growing up as a fan of the original British series, Devin claims that its American counterpart failed to capture the charm that the original hosts brought to the show and that an overhaul is long overdue.

Who better to reinvigorate and rejuvenate the car show than two of the most influential progressive metal guitarists in the biz?

Tosin Abasi of Animals as Leaders and Periphery's Misha Mansoor have been put forward by Walker as suitable candidates for special guest hosts, claiming they would be pivotal in gaining a new audience and making things more interesting for current viewers.

It's not hard to imagine, either, especially given Mansoor's love for cars, evident from his Instagram page where he's partial to sharing a snap of a supercar or two.

If their driving is anything like their shredding skills, we'd be in for a treat.

Sign the petition if you want to make it happen.

Away from the prog-metal behemoth that is Animals As Leaders, Javier Reyes has been taking the eight-string in rather different directions with solo project Mestis, which weaves diverse genres into tasteful, tonesome guitar-heavy jams.

And now, to celebrate the announcement of new Mestis live album, En Vivo, we have an exclusive playthrough to share with y’all.

Filmed in his home studio, Reyes’ runthrough of Media Noche makes full use of the eight-string’s range, with passages that border on classical fingerstyle at moments, but all with his unique sense of groove and tone.

“Media Noche (Midnight) is a song where I'm pulling influences well outside of my normal prog/metal world,” says Reyes.

“It features influences from my childhood in Washington, DC listening to go-go music, hip-hop, and R&B. I believe in writing music that comes naturally yet has character. I'd like to believe Media Noche definitely comes off as a unique breath of fresh air in the world of eight-string guitar.”

Part of what keeps the track sounding fresh is Reyes’ gear picks: he’s playing a Japanese Custom ESP Vintage Plus eight-string with custom DiMarzio Strat eight-string pickups, running into a Synergy Syn2 with Pitbull module, and Neural DSP Archetype: Plini plugin.

Pedals, meanwhile, include a Bogner Harlow Comp/Boost, Empress Effects ParaEQ, Strymon Big Sky and Dunlop Echoplex.

En Vivo is out on September 25 via Sumerian Records, and features nine tracks recorded in different cities across North America.

The first of these, Gentle Giant (live from Los Angeles, CA) is available to stream below.

For more info, and to preorder, head over to Mestis.

Animals as Leaders performed a livestream event on July 9, and now footage from the gig has finally made its way online.

You can check out the opening cut of the set, Arithmophobia – with Tosin Abasi on his super-fly white Abasi Concepts eight-string electric guitar – above.

Other AAL tunes performed during the livestream included Ectogenesis, Tooth and Claw and Physical Education - the latter of which sees Abasi's custom Rick Toone get a serious workout.

The entire set is available for viewing on the Sumerian Records YouTube channel.

On the heels of virtual performances by the likes of Marcus King and Joe Bonamassa, Animals As Leaders have announced a livestream event to take place on July 9 at 4:00 PM PST.

The event is presented by Live Nation and hosted by Sumerian Records Facebook and YouTube Live.

It will also be linked through a variety of House of Blues and Fillmore Facebook accounts.

Little additional information has been released as of now, but it's likely to feature AAL electric guitar player Tosin Abasi’s mind-boggling selective picking technique.

For more information, head to Animals As Leaders.

As a form of popular music, instrumental guitar-based rock first found popularity in the early '60s. 

A few years before that, with early practitioners of the form such as Duane Eddy, with his simple low-string melodic lines such as Rebel Rouser, and Link Wray, who gave us the feedback-laden Rumble (which featured one of the first uses of the power chord), the genre quickly took hold with young guitarists everywhere.

Its rudimentary style made it easy for almost any guitarist to quickly fret a few chords, play some simple melodies, add an effect like reverb and presto! – a tune was born. Across the pond in England, the Shadows reigned as instrumental kings for the first few years of the '60s, beginning with their U.K. chart-topper Apache in 1960. 

The Shadows’ lead guitarist, Hank Marvin, with his Fiesta Red Fender Strat (he was the first musician in England to own one) – resplendent with its maple fingerboard and gold-plated fittings, not to mention its owner’s unique use of the vibrato arm – would influence an entire generation of British guitarists that followed in his wake, from Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck to Pete Townshend and David Gilmour.

“In the early days when we first started having hits, we obviously didn’t appreciate that we would in any shape or form be influential,” Marvin says today. “It was a bit later, around 1962, when we started to realize that a lot of bands that were appearing in Britain and other countries were copying us.

“That’s when we realized we were having an influence. On one hand, we were a bit of a catalyst in getting people to pick up guitar, bass and drums, etc. On another, those who were already playing instruments, such as guitar, were turning around and wanting to play our style of music.

“That appreciation of the influence we had in the early Sixties was something we only came to understand more clearly as the years went by. People who were in heavy metal bands or blues bands, for example, we’d bump into them at an airport or some function, and they’d come up to us and say, ‘Man, you’re the reason I play guitar!’”

Meanwhile, the Shadows’ American “counterparts,” the Ventures – from Tacoma, Washington – hit the charts with their 1960 hit Walk, Don’t Run, which, in turn, ignited the inspirational fire for the burgeoning instrumental surf-rock scene. Repeatedly cited as the first surf-rock instrumental, Dick Dale and the Del-Tones’ 1961 tune Let’s Go Trippin’ officially ushered in the first wave of instrumental surf-rock’s halcyon days.

With its epicentre in Southern California, instro-surf soon spread across the country like wildfire. The Chantays’ Pipeline,’ the Surfaris’ Wipeout and Dale’s furious follow-up, Misirlou, further secured the genre’s strong foothold.

Hallmarks of instro-surf included sounds and tones that painted an aural picture of sun, surf and sand. Fender guitars were everywhere, especially the Strat, Jazzmaster and Jaguar, along with heaping helpings of spring reverb.

The Ventures later switched to Mosrite guitars, using them for the first time on their 1963 album The Ventures in Space, while Marvin played UK-made Burns guitars from 1964 to 1970.

“Many of the early surf instrumentals of the early Sixties weren’t just playing music without singing,” says Dave Wronski, guitarist with SoCal instro-surf rockers Slacktone. “They were, especially with the use of the Fender Reverb unit, creating music with other-worldly and non-linear spatial effects to create atmospheres, and/or sounds of nature, representations of wild ocean surf, volcanoes, car racing, etc.”

“The genre was incredibly diverse, with artists like Link Wray, Freddie King, Santo & Johnny, Dick Dale, the Ventures, Hank Marvin and others,” adds instrumental rock meister Joe Satriani. “They all showed the importance of melody over flash but never failed to impress with technical innovations. Not an easy feat in any genre! This approach built the foundation for future artists like myself.”

As the British Invasion began transforming the entire musical landscape in 1964, instro-surf’s popularity soon waned. Penetration by California combo the Pyramids would bookend the genre’s heyday.

Gone to ground, the instrumental continued to evolve in the hands of guitarists such as Jeff Beck, Peter Green, Clarence White, Danny Kirwan, Lonnie Mack and others who, although not primarily instrumental guitarists, featured instrumentals in their live and studio outings.

This endured throughout the '70s, when the Allman Brothers Band’s catchy, harmony-infused Jessica, Santana’s soulful Europa (Earth’s Cry Heaven’s Smile), Van Halen’s game-changing tapping opus Eruption and Jeff Beck’s jazz-fusion explorations on 1975’s Blow by Blow and 1976’s Wired expanded upon the instrumental template.

When the '80s were in full swing, instrumental rock had morphed into a more virtuosic format. Gone was the simplicity of the early years where any guitarist, even a beginner, could pick his way through an instrumental.

Now, a much more advanced and technical approach was at the fore, propelling the genre forward and outward into unlimited and untapped possibilities. What do we mean? Just give Steve Vai’s The Attitude Song a quick spin.

Shrapnel Records, set up by young enterprising musician Mike Varney in 1980, became ground zero for the decade’s virtuosic instrumental guitar players.

By pushing the boundaries of the instrumental realm by the fusion of speed and classical elements mixed with hard rock and heavy metal styling, it birthed a whole new generation of shredding, neo-classical players.

Critically and commercially acclaimed, it ignited a second wave of popularity into the instrumental genre, courtesy of the likes of Marty Friedman, Yngwie Malmsteen and Vinnie Moore. Later, similarly styled guitarists such as Satriani and Vai would drive the genre back onto the charts.

Satriani in particular would be a huge part of popularizing shredding and bring instrumental rock right back into the mainstream – and to the masses.

His 1987 album, Surfing with the Alien, was a pièce de résistance built upon what had come before, yet it took it light years into the future, bucking all musical trends of the day. Peaking at Number 29 on Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart, it affirmed that the new instrumental guitar hero of the time had finally arrived.

“I wanted Surfing to be a celebration of all my influences as well as a big step into the future of instrumental electric guitar,” Satriani says. “Its initial and continued success has validated my feeling that artists should do what they want – regardless of current trends – and stay true to their artistic goals.”

Of course, no overview of instrumental rock could fail to mention Cliffs of Dover, Eric Johnson’s super-catchy 1990 thrill ride, which – surprisingly – didn’t make the cut for his 1986 album, Tones, and was written pretty damn quickly.

“I don’t even know if I can take credit for writing Cliffs of Dover, ” Johnson said years ago. “It was just there for me one day. There are songs I have spent months writing, and I literally wrote this one in five minutes.

“The melody was there in one minute and the other parts came together in another four. I think a lot of the stuff just comes through us like that. It’s kind of a gift from a higher place that all of us are eligible for.”

“When this new stuff came along, Joe Satriani and people like Steve Vai and things like that, I thought it was really exciting,” Marvin adds. “It was a different way of playing guitar from the way I and other guys were playing.

“It was very technical, a lot of virtuoso playing going on there, and I guess it was just right for the time. A lot of music, in my experience, when it becomes successful, it’s because it’s right for the time, and probably the artist is right for the time too. Maybe five years earlier it wouldn’t have happened.

“Five years later it may not have happened either. I thought it was terrific, as it was good to see that instrumental guitar music was still being played by people like Joe, Steve, Eric and other guys like the Hellecasters’ John Jorgensen, Jerry Donahue and Will Ray.”

As one of Satriani’s early guitar students, Vai followed his former teacher’s footsteps with the release of his magnum opus, 1990’s Passion and Warfare, an album that expanded upon the formula and furthered the genre’s standing with the populace.

Following the lead set by Varney’s Shrapnel label, Vai would later venture forth on a similar route, co-founding the Favored Nations label with former Guitar Center owner Ray Scherr in 1999. But with grunge engulfing the musical landscape and transforming it forever, guitar-driven instrumental music again fell out of favor, and the few remnants that remained went underground.

Instrumental rock received a massive boost in 1994 when Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction featured Dale’s Misirlou in the film’s opening credits.

This newfound interest would influence many of the up-and-coming bands on the scene, such as Alabama’s Man or Astro-Man? and Nashville’s Los Straitjackets, both of whom fused the sound of early surf with a garage-y punk spirit.

Los Straitjackets added an aesthetic ingredient as well to their live performances, with the wearing of Mexican Lucha libre wrestling masks.

While others such as Chicago outfit Tortoise, whose cocktail of jazz, electronica and dub influences, and Scottish combo Mogwai pushed the genre further along a more experimental route soon to be known as post-rock, a term coined by Mojo writer Simon Reynolds in 1994.

Post-Rock instrumental bands utilized the guitars to paint aural images where tonality, rhythms and textures took priority over riffs, melodies and solos. This approach had more in common with elements found in the cinematic film scores of the '60s, the early progressive sounds of bands such as Pink Floyd and the soundscapes of ambient music.

“Ennio Morricone, in a similar time frame, was using unusual sounds in his movie scores,” Wronski says. “That helped create imagery, alone, without the visual of the film.

“Pink Floyd’s atmospheric instrumental textures seem to be part of that lineage. Jimi Hendrix, with the instrumental portions of his songs, created – with his guitar – sonic atmospheres not heard before.

“Billy Cobham’s first solo album, Spectrum [1973], was an important instrumental album for guitar and drums. Jeff Beck, I think, was inspired by Spectrum to begin his instrumental contributions, beginning with Blow by Blow and Wired, two classics.”

Post-rock continued flying the instrumental flag during the 2000s. Rising out of Austin, Explosions in the Sky adopted a three-guitar frontal attack to serve up lengthy progressive instrumental aural explorations that lent themselves perfectly for film and television soundtracks.

“Melody is everything,” Explosions guitarist Munaf Rayani told us in 2011. “If we don’t leave practice humming at least one of the guitar lines, it’s not going to survive. Melody becomes its own lyric, its own voice.”

Fellow Texans This Will Destroy You followed suit with atmospheric effects and layered soundscapes while Irish outfit God Is an Astronaut fused Krautrock, space-rock and electronics into the mix.

As this new decade dawns, the new kids on the block are pushing the boundaries of the genre to further extreme levels.

Texan combo Polyphia, based around the six-string pairing of Tim Henson and Scott LePage; Washington, D.C., three-piece Animals As Leaders, featuring the innovative playing of guitarist Tosin Abasi; and Boston-based progressive trio the Surrealist, led by guitarist Roopam Garg, are among the bands leading the charge. 

They’re all creating highly innovative and otherworldly soundscapes, taking the Post-Rock sounds and completely dismantling them.

“The best music for me has always been music that affects my perception of the world,” Garg enthuses. “I treat compositions as if they’re lenses to look at the world through, with each lens unmasking a certain portion of reality. It’s analogous to watching a movie. As you view the film, the music can serve up to 90 percent of the emotional content within the frame.

Good film scores are able to bring out anxiety, hope or depression within the characters, without which the film would be devoid of human connection. Music plays such a truly vital role in the perception of the mind – you could overlay different music on the same movie scene and alter the narrative simply by the fact that you’ve changed the underlying score.

In the same way, if you listen to a beautiful piece of music as you’re walking across a traffic intersection, you notice things in people’s expressions and mannerisms that would otherwise be overlooked without music. I absolutely love that.”

As Polyphia’s Tim Henson told us last year, “We definitely want to fuck shit up. If something’s been done before, we want to turn it upside-down and mess with it. Too many bands just do the same things over and over. What’s the point? Be yourself. Be original. Otherwise, move out of the way and let somebody else have at it.”

With their hunger to explore and a spirit of experimentation, guitarists such as Abasi and Garg are also eschewing the six-string guitar in favor of eight-string guitars.

“There’s a psychological shift to having access to more strings,” Garg says. “It alters your perception of what a guitar is. With full access to both the upper and lower registers, you’re able to approach composition in a more holistic way with one instrument. You also have more options with regard to different timbres. The same note will sound different on different strings simply by virtue of string thickness.”

Abasi has gone one step further, developing a new line of innovative guitar designs via his recently formed company, Abasi Concepts.

Garg is a recent convert – and an endorsee of Abasi’s guitars: “Tosin has created one of the best guitar designs in the world. I can’t say enough good things about their guitars, which they’ve named the Larada. I’m someone who focuses a lot less on specifications and more on how I feel when I play an instrument, and the Larada mysteriously just feels perfect in every way.”

While guitar-based music tends to be a primary source of inspiration for most guitarists, in Garg’s quest to approach the world of instrumentals in an innovative spirit, it is artists working in an ambient experimental format that inspire his guitar playing.

“Ambient music is more liberating as a composer,” he says. “There are no restrictions from rigid structures or instrumentation. You’re literally able to paint whatever you want on a blank canvas – anything goes. I’m allowed to explore unorthodox sounds on the guitar that wouldn’t have a home anywhere else.

“Other than ambient music, what kind of genre would call for the scratchy sounds of a broken lead cable, or an out-of-tune instrument? or the sounds of breathing, bleeding through the mic?

“These ‘imperfections’ are overlooked and even seen as blemishes in other, more sterile environments like progressive metal, where it seems like perfection is the end goal. There’s no room for error. But I love errors.

“These genres seek the perfect guitar tone, the perfect mix, the perfect guitar solo, and end up overlooking beauties underneath the cracks of the guitar that I wish to explore. I mostly listen to a lot of other ambient experiments artists like Nils Frahm, John Hopkins and Taylor Deupree, as well as film soundtracks.

“I don’t really pay attention to what other guitar players are doing nowadays. I don’t think I listen to any guitar-centered music any more, sadly. Except maybe Meshuggah and Animals As Leaders.”

For Wronski, it’s the challenge of working (mostly) within the confines of the original surf records – while not ignoring what came after – that drives his approach.

“[It’s about] theme, imagery and motion, coupled with a big, flattering (to the guitar and the melody) sound with depth and punch,” he says. “Right-hand dynamics are king, and the amp responds to the intensity of the touch, with the guitar not just acting as a trigger. What I think the original guys wanted to achieve is to make their guitar sound like an orchestra in one handful of guitar.”

The evolution of instrumental guitar music over the past 60 years has seen a gigantic leap forward for the form, and with the new players on the scene, its future looks even brighter.

28-year-old Australian maverick prog-rock guitarist Plini is just one of those new kids on the block who are gleefully propelling the genre onward. His head-turning sonic explorations have even caught the ear of Steve Vai, who declared, “When I saw Plini play, I felt that the future of exceptional guitar playing was secure.”

Plini’s self-released 2016 debut album, Handmade Cities, was also praised by Vai. Other at-least-mostly-instrumental names to watch out for include Sarah Longfield, Chon, This Patch of Sky, Yvette Young, Al Joseph, Tauk, Distant Dream, And So I Watch You from Afar, Angel Vivaldi, Standards, Hedras, Toska, Yasi Hofer, Deaf Scene and Jason Richardson.

...Also, Gretchen Menn, Sithu Aye, I Built the Sky, Unconditional Arms, David Maxim Micic and Mike Dawes. And let us not forget Julian Lage, Guthrie Govan, Johnny A., Nick Johnston, Misha Mansoor and – well, the point is the list is almost endless in 2020, which implies that the guitar-based instro-rock scene is quite robust, to say the very least.

“New rhythms, new melodies, 10-string wizards… Every generation creates their own groove and tone. It’s inevitable and I welcome it,” Satriani says. “It’s so cool to see so much innovation going on with the younger players.

“A few years ago I witnessed Animals As Leaders at a live charity event we were playing together and I was completely blown away with the magic they created with their original music and a whole new set of guitar techniques. It’s a great time for guitar, even if the pop charts don’t reflect it. There’s a lot of creativity going on behind the scenes right now.

“My new album, Shapeshifting is a big leap forward for me. I’ve taken some giant steps in how I approach composition and arrangement, and it’s paid off. I really love this album!” 

• Read more about Joe Satriani's new album Shapeshifting

This month, I'd like to talk about a cool, useful technique I sometimes use called 'double picking,' which involves repeating each note in a melody twice using alternate (down-up) picking. A good example of this technique can be found in the first solo I play in An Infinite Regression, from Animals as Leaders’ latest release, Weightless.

I begin over an F#m chord and play an F#-sus2 arpeggio across bars 1 and 2, sticking with a rhythm of straight 16th notes while double-picking each different note. This creates a melody-within-a-melody effect, as your ear hears a slower eighth-note idea within the 16th-note rhythm, almost as if you were tremolo picking.

In bars 3 and 4, I change the fretboard shape slightly to acknowledge the underlying D chord, with brief use of the sharp four, G#, which I immediately resolve up a half step, to A, the fifth of D. I use the same approach in bars 5 and 6 over Bm, but here I truncate the idea by starting on the B root note on the A string’s 14th fret before moving down and then back up again.

Across bars 7 and 8, I play a quick descending-ascending line over the five (V) chord, C#, using notes from the C# Phrygian- dominant mode (C# D E# F# G#A B), which is the fifth mode of F# harmonic minor (F# G# A B C# D E#).

I switch to much simpler and more melodic lines in bars 9–14, outlining the same F#m-D- Bm chord progression of bars 1–6. At bar 15, however, I play a fast C# Phrygian-dominant descending line again, using 16th-note triplets, quintuplets and 16th notes. The solo wraps up with a restatement of the melodic approach of bars 9–14, but at bar 21, I introduce a new chord to the progression, Eb, which affords a shift in harmonic content to what is already a shifty harmonic environment. I finish up in bars 31 and 32 with straight eighth notes and use descending fourths to outline the B-to-C# chordal movement.

Overall, this is a challenging solo to play up to speed, so I encourage you to take it one bar at a time and gradually work it up to tempo. Once you have the shapes down, you’ll find that it’s not as difficult to play as it may seem.

To me, one of the most valuable study practices has been the exploration of arpeggios (also known as “broken chords,” wherein each note of a chord is played individually and in succession) played across all the strings. Like most guitarists, I began on six-string and soon graduated to seven- and then eight-string guitar. This month, I’d like to demonstrate some cool ways to perform a variety of arpeggios on the seven-string guitar.

An approach that has worked well for me is to devise a specific arpeggio fingering pattern diagonally across the strings, spanning over two octaves, for which I can then alter one or two notes in each octave to morph from one chord quality to another, for example, from minor seven to dominant seven or major seven. This way, the fingerings are visually and physically similar and thus easier to memorize.

Let’s begin with an Em7 chord (see FIGURE 1). After I strum the chord, I pick the notes of an Em7 arpeggio: E (the root), G (the minor, or “flatted,” third), B (the fifth) and D (the minor, or “flatted,” seventh), descending across the top five strings in seventh position and then continuing across the bottom three strings in fifth position.

In order to get the most out of my practice time, I’ll incorporate economy picking (also known as rest-stroke picking) into the execu- tion of arpeggios such as this. Economy picking is a technique whereby you use the same pick direction when crossing to an adjacent (neigh- boring) string: when moving from a lower to a higher string, the last note on the lower string and the first note on the higher string are picked with downstrokes. Conversely, when moving from a higher to a lower string, the last note on the higher string and the first note on the lower string are picked with upstrokes.

FIGURE 2 illustrates an Em7 arpeggio ascending and descending across all seven strings, with fret-hand fingerings and pick strokes indicated. I begin with an upstroke on the low B string, followed by three consecutive downstrokes as I move across the bottom three strings. This pick-hand movement is then repeated for the next four notes (played on the middle three strings), followed by a hammer-on from the G string’s seventh to ninth frets and the continuation of the downstroke movement across the top three strings. I’m essentially raking across the top five strings. When I descend, I use consecutive upstrokes, or a reverse rake, to move across to lower strings.

Now let’s tweak this pattern to formulate other arpeggios qualities. FIGURE 3 offers an Emaj7 arpeggio (E G# B D#) picked the same way as FIGURE 2, and FIGURE 4 formulates an enigmatic-sounding Emaj7#5 arpeggio, achieved by changing the B note of Emaj7 to C (the augmented, or "sharped," fifth). Interestingly, Emaj7#5 can also be analyzed as a G# major triad (G# B# D#) played over an E bass note (G#/E). FIGURES 6, 7 and 8 illustrate similarly structured arpeggio patterns for E7 (E G# B D), Em/maj7 (E G B D#) and Em7f5 (E G Bb D) of Emaj7 to C (the augmented, or “sharped,”D), respectively.

"Earth Departure" is one of the most adventurous tunes on the Animals As Leaders album, Weightless. The song features some very intense, complex figures that require extremely tight band interplay.

To my way of thinking, much of the song is in straight 4/4 time, but it doesn't sound like it because many of the rhythms are based on unusual 16-note syncopations and odd-length phrases. In this column, I'll analyze the song's outro guitar solo, which is one of my favorite solos on the record.

As many of you are aware, the majority of the music I play with AAL is performed on an eight-string guitar, tuned (low to high) E B E A D G B E. In the example included here, the solo has been arranged for seven-string guitar (B E A D G B E), but a six-string will work just as well, as there is only one note—the first note of beat four in bar 6—that is played on the seventh string.

FIGURE 1 illustrates the entire 14-bar outro solo. Tonally, the solo revolves around an E major/C# minor axis, but there are a few other elements thrown in that shake up the har-monic environment. I begin the solo by playing over a quick B5-A chord change, followed by E, starting with an eighth-note triplet line based on A melodic minor (A B C D E F# G#). When I get to the E chord, I switch to the E major scale (E F# G# A B C# D#), which, when played over the subsequent C#m chord in bar 3, can also be analyzed as C# Aeolian, or C# natural minor (C# D# E F# G# A B). Notice the "staggered"-sounding dotted-eighth/16-th note rhythm of the solo lines in bars 2-4.
  

Bar 4 switches to 2/4 time, followed by a single bar of 3/4, a bar of 4/4, two bars of 3/4 and another bar of 2/4. The solo then concludes with five bars of 4/4.

In bar5, I play a short line over Bbm, followed by a descending line, primarily performed with pull-offs and finger slides, played over A but based on the E Lydian mode (E F# G# A# B C# D#). At the end of this bar, I begin a series of ascending sweeps based on the Bb minor pentatonic scale (Bb Db Eb F Ab), performed by dragging the pick across the strings in a single downstroke.  

One of the toughest things for me to do while traveling constantly is to find time to warm up quickly and effectively. I have devised a few different techniques over the years that have proven invaluable to me and which I’d like to share with you this month.

Two of the most common phrasing patterns I find myself using are either arpeggio sequences, wherein long lines are formed from playing one note per string across groups of strings, or chromatic lines, wherein a series of notes are played in succession on one string. In the two exercises presented here, both approaches are employed. Use alternate picking throughout, and strive for clarity and cleanliness in the articulation of each note. Once you have a handle on this, you can try incorporating economy picking, which is my picking preference when crossing strings.

FIGURES 1 and 2 are exercises that I visualize purely for their symmetry, with “reverse diagonals” played across the strings alternating with chromatic notes on one string. FIGURE 1 begins with the pinkie on the high E string’s 15th fret, the ring finger on the 14th fret of the B string, the middle finger on the 13th fret of the G and the index finger on the 12th fret of the D. On beat two, I “walk up” the D string chromatically (one fret at a time) with each fretting finger until the pinkie is at the 15th fret, after which I reverse the diagonal and move one note per string back up to the high E. On beat three into beat four, I chromatically ascend the high E back up to the 15th fret, after which the first shape is repeated. The pattern then moves down one string and is repeated three times, and then I change direction and move back up.

When you get back to the very beginning of the phrase, a neat twist is to move down
one fret and repeat the entire sequence, as I do in FIGURE2. As performed on a seven-
string, the lick becomes even longer than it would be on a six-string.

• Now that you have the idea, try mov- ing similar ideas around the fretboard in
• as many different ways as you can devise. You’ll find that exercises like this will keep your chops in shape, whether you’re about to walk out onstage or are preparing to record a solo.

Animals As Leaders guitarist Javier Reyes recently got together with Ortega Guitars to shoot four exclusive performance videos.

The first one, which you can watch below, shows Reyes playing an original classical-style piece called "Suspiro" on Ortega's JRSM-RWC Signature Series Javier Reyes eight-string nylon guitar.

"This song is named 'Suspiro,' which translates to the word sigh," Reyes says. "The mood of the song leaves [you] wanting to take deep breaths either out of suspense [or] relief."

Animals As Leaders frontman Tosin Abasi, one of the early adopters of ergonomic, extended-range guitar designs, has officially launched a new company, Abasi Guitars. The company's instruments, which were conceived and designed by Abasi, will be manufactured by veteran luthier Frank Falbo at his shop in Ventura, California. Falbo, founder of Falbo Guitars, is a member of Fishman's R&D team and a former vice president of product development at Seymour Duncan.

Andy Alt—Steve Vai's marketing director and creator of A Little Thunder pickups—represents the final third of the Abasi Guitars team. Alt has worked in a marketing capacity for Plini, Intervals and other progressive, guitar-based acts, not to mention several contemporary retail and tech brands.

If you follow guitar-based news, trends and social media, you might've seen Abasi's flagship design before; at one point, the guitarist was in talks with Ibanez to release it as Abasi's latest extended-range signature guitar, following the company's popular TAM10 and TAM100 models. In the end, however, Abasi realized—along with Falbo and Alt—that his design was bigger than just one model with eight strings.

"[Ibanez] was down to do it, but the prototyping process just proved to be really lengthy," Abasi told Guitar World last week. "It’s not the fault of Ibanez—it’s just the reality of large-scale manufacturing. Also, once you plug something like locking tuners into the actual math of the whole supply chain, you’re quadrupling the cost of that particular feature. So things like that made it cost prohibitive to design the guitar exactly the way I wanted, even though we love Ibanez and the great work they're doing.

"Andy and I were brainstorming, and he said, 'Why don’t you have Frank build your guitars?' I’d already commissioned an eight-string fanned-fret classical from him and worked with him on Fishman's Fluence pickup line, so I knew he was into innovative ideas that actually pushed the guitar forward as opposed to being arbitrarily different. I knew he was an extremely smart guy who’s shown his abilities in very different ways.

"So the fact that he had the capacity to do the guitars, he’s local and we already had a relationship, it was this perfect epiphany moment where I realized I had all the moving parts to take my design and do it the way I wanted. And it turns out I’m even more drawn to the processes of making guitars than I initially thought."

Abasi designed the unique ergonomic fanned-fret, eight-string guitar—pictured several times on this page—from the ground up. It functions as a multi-scale or straight-scale platform with a comfortable neck profile, even for players who are new to extended-range and multi-scale guitars. Its somewhat rounded shape and generous body contours allow for a bevy of comfortable playing positions; meanwhile, the eye-catching front bevel lets the player's hand sit more flush with the guitar's body.

"It’s evolved into a different instrument than Tosin’s earlier prototypes, and it offers even more options," Falbo added. "In this case, it’s six-string, seven-string, eight-string, multi-scale or straight—there are different color options and different wood options. There will be some set models, but we'll have the ability to add custom features if customers want them.” Perhaps the biggest departure is the guitar's long tenon, deep-set neck joint; it's slim enough to allow unprecedented upper access and retain the liveliness of a bolt neck with the sustain of a set neck.

Abasi—as detailed in countless Guitar World interviews over the years—has always been a forward thinker, whether the topic is Animals as Leaders' brawny, blindingly virtuosic post-thrash, prog-metal—or the instruments he uses to create it. As expected, he's already looking to the future.

"Beyond the ability to have this guitar available to the consumer in different string configurations or with or without a headstock, etc., I actually love designing guitars—so we want this to be an entire product line," he said. "From a creative standpoint, it’s fulfilling to collaborate with an amazing luthier and all the available materials and tech and to listen to our fan base and respond to consumer desires and produce what we think are really good answers to those needs. Moving forward, we’d like to have a whole line of guitars and signature artists as well."

Within the past three years, a handful of popular guitarists have leapt into the guitar-manufacturing game, but Falbo stressed that this is a very different situation.

"Tosin’s not the first artist to cross over into guitar design and manufacturing, but it’s never really been done this way," he said. “My overarching design philosophy is carve the first one and CNC [Computer Numerical Control] the rest. Sculpt the first so you know what you’re repeating with the CNC. That’s how you maintain unparalleled quality and consistency levels—a balance of automation and hand work. In this case, a very capable U.S. shop will be able to fulfill orders and meet demand, no matter how big it scales."

"An artist paired with a luthier is a winning combination that Tosin exemplified previously with smaller builders, so the experience is already there," Alt added. "You arrive at this conclusion where he gets form and function, but it becomes realized in real time. The shop is very close to us [in Southern California], so we don’t have to deal with distance or prototypes being mailed to us."

"I’m not playing a six-string guitar made by one of the big companies and just decided that my brand value exceeded their royalty rates," Abasi said. "I have design needs that only the most adventurous companies were even willing to tackle. Ibanez has been that company. 'Hey, you want more strings than anyone has ever considered putting on guitars? Sure!' But then I kind of wanted more than that, so that’s where my history of custom guitar, commissioned guitars, goes back to me wanting to work with a team that could do whatever they wanted, design wise. As an artist, that’s where my needs lie. I think I have a fan base that also would love more conceptual designs and things that are more catered to their needs. As a member of that guitar community, I’m in a perfect position to make the dream guitar company that’s most concerned with those players that really access the designs they want from other places."

Abasi, Falbo and Alt haven't officially announced a starting price, but it's safe to say it will be in the vicinity of $3,200. The Abasi Guitars crew will attend the 2018 Winter NAMM Show (booth 4130), which takes place January 25 to 28 in Anaheim, California, so stay tuned for more product photos, details and launch information.

In the meantime, you can follow along at abasiguitarsusa.com and @abasiguitars on social media.

Tosin Abasi has revealed that he will launch his own guitar company next year.

In a Facebook post, the guitarist wrote "As some of you may have suspected, I'm happy to announce that I'm extremely close to making my signature guitar available to everyone." The guitarist then provided a link to a website with the url of abasiguitarsusa.com.

Mind you, the website is—at the moment—completely blank but for a box allowing you to subscribe to the company's newsletter.

We'll certainly have more info on the company and its products as Abasi reveals more.

For now, you can subscribe to the newsletter at abasiguitarsusa.com.

Animals As Leaders have shared the music video for “Cognitive Contortions,” a track from their latest album, The Madness of Many, which was released in November via Sumerian Records. You can check out the video, which was directed by Randy Edwards, below.

"This album feels like total synergy between the three of us," guitarist Tosin Abasi told us in October. "None of this music would have turned out the same way without the equal inclusion of all of our musical ideas and that feel special. We're beyond thrilled with the result."

Adds drummer Matt Garstka: "The Madness of Many is an explorative and ambitious journey of harmony, rhythm, musical expression and emotion. It has been the most collaborative effort for the band and an evolution in each of the members' musical path. Although conceptually dense, it is the most natural-sounding Animals As Leaders album yet."

The album—the band's fourth—was produced by Animals As Leaders, with guitarist Javier Reyes handling the final mix.