A year ago, if you'd have told us David Hasselhoff would contribute vocals to a heavy metal track, we would have dismissed the claim faster than the Baywatch star could take his top off, but here we are.
December 2020 saw the release of a surprise collaboration between The Hoff and Austrian metal/pop art duo CueStack for shredfest Through the Night.
While Hasselhoff's feature grabbed the headlines, those face-melting guitar lines are spectacular, so naturally we were dying to see them in action.
Guitarist Bernth Brodträger – who you might know from his 200k-sub-strong YouTube channel BERNTH – joins us today to play through the track in full, and he's included onscreen tabs should you wish to try your hand at playing along.
He plays Ibanez electric guitars – an AZ2402 Prestige BKF and RGD2127FX-ISH seven-string, to be specific – equipped with Elixir Optiweb strings, through a Kemper amp modeler.
“I got to meet David Hasselhoff for the first time in 2018, in a meeting that my CueStack partner Martin Kames set up in Vienna,” says Brodträger.
“I was surprised to hear about his interest in rock and metal music - he listed Metallica, Iron Maiden, Killswitch Engage, Marilyn Manson, and other bands as favorites and we talked about making a metal song together.
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“Through the Night is essentially a fun, over-the-top fusion of classic metal elements and David's powerful voice. He is a trained musical singer and I love the dramatic touch he added to the song. It all came together as soon as he entered the studio with us near Vienna, hearing the song with his vocals for the first time was a surreal moment I will never forget!
“I couldn't go to the extreme with my shredding and progressive influences (we wanted the song to appeal to David's fans as well), but I still added a challenging solo with one of the fastest lines I recorded so far.”
