And you would expect nothing less from a guitar player who drilled holes in his acoustic guitar to see what happens, and filled one full of water, restrung it with rubber bands, and submerged his Boss Katana in a tank of water to see what happens – it sounded “UNREAL”.
Well, Bernth spells out his complaints in his lyrics. Has today’s generation got it all back to front? Perhaps this is simply a PSA that, ultimately, there is a thin line between extreme and parody, that there is a herd mentality in modern metal – a certain way of doing things – and it’s stifling creativity. The punchline comes with some conventional prog metal shred on a six-string, arpeggios set to burn, and also drawing our attention to the dichotomy between the Cro-Magnon silverback rhythm and the technical ecstasies of contemporary metal lead playing. He reaches for another from Ibanez’s extended range electric guitar catalogue, the 8-string RG5328-LDK Prestige, with its black open-pore finish and DiMarzio Fusion Edge 8 humbucker pairing. Starting off, he tries an all-black Ibanez RGD Prestige 7-string, equipped with a set of Fishman Fluence humbuckers because they have fast become industry-standard across the djent set. We might even recognise some of ourselves in there, in that urge – even when using 7-string guitars, or eight or nine – to keep tuning down until the bass guitar is crowded out the mix and there’s a demarcation dispute with the musician’s union.īernth knows this all too well. Still Shreds is a cautionary tale of what happens when you take an extended range guitar and take it all the way down.
But does he get at a deeper truth here – that, yes, tuning down ad infinitum is an aesthetic choice that does not come free.
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