The track is the fourth from the Firewind guitarist's upcoming solo album, Quantum Leap
(Image credit: AFM Records / YouTube)
Earlier this month, Gus G announced the title of his forthcoming solo LP, Quantum Leap. Prior to the announcement, the guitarist had already released three tracks from the album: Force Majeure (with Vinnie Moore), Exosphere and the hard-riffing, solo-loaded Fierce.
Now, the former Ozzy Osbourne/current Firewind shredder has offered up another musical morsel, releasing the LP's fourth single, Enigma of Life, and its accompanying music video.
The clip sees the guitarist standing gracefully in a rather quiet-looking spot by a lake, throwing down a cornucopia of blissful melodies and rapid-fire lead runs, in what's a somewhat stylistic departure from the album's previously released material. Check it out below.
Gus G says the album's title is a reference to the fact that it's his first all-instrumental outing.
“‘Quantum leap’ means when you're taking a big step, so for me, making an instrumental album and letting my guitar do the talking was a big step for me, for once,” he explains. “I've always worked with singers and collaborated with many people, but this time, I decided to just let the guitar be a voice. So this was my quantum leap.”
He continues: “Instrumental music might not be a big seller, but everybody can listen to anything, and there are no limits to what I can do. There's a track on the record that's a little bit synth-wave [Night Driver], there's a bluesy ballad thing [Enigma of Life], there's a track that has more prog elements [Into the Unknown], there's some power metal [Demon Stomp, Judgement Day], so it's all under the hard rock/heavy metal umbrella, but I wanted it to have some variety.
“It doesn't sound like I wrote 10 different riffs on the low E string and put a bunch of solos over it. And there's no excuse for anybody to say, ‘I like the music but I hate that type of vocals...’ because there are no vocals!”
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He also says a lot of the music written for the album materialized during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Music was my only gateway, basically, so that's what I did; I just made songs,” he says. “I couldn't fly to another country and meet with other musicians and do pre-production or anything like that, so I just decided to write stuff on my own and just make a guitar album.”
Quantum Leap is set to arrive October 8 via AFM Records. Check out its tracklisting below.
Sam was Staff Writer at GuitarWorld.com from 2019 to 2023, and also created content for Total Guitar, Guitarist and Guitar Player. He has well over 15 years of guitar playing under his belt, as well as a degree in Music Technology (Mixing and Mastering). He's a metalhead through and through, but has a thorough appreciation for all genres of music. In his spare time, Sam creates point-of-view guitar lesson videos on YouTube under the name Sightline Guitar.
