Friday, August 04, 2006

Because I'm All About the Guitar: The ultimate distortion?

Minus many brain cells, but still kicking ass.Sound. Pitch. Tone. A unique quality that announces your playing style. It's something that every guitarist is after, at least every guitarist seeking a career.

But you can only get so many different kinds of sound withing your genre. Take heavy metal for example. What I had long considered an ever-evolving sound is actually minor variations on a theme.

I have long held Pantera as my ideal for heavy metal distortion. It's rough, a slap in the face, but their sound also has a lot of clarity. Those chords are crisp and don't bleed together like some metal bands.

After some recent critical listening, I was shocked to discover some amazing similarities between Dimebag and Toni Iomi's (Black Sabbath) sound. That chainsaw buzz guitar distortion is present in both guitarist's work.

Photobucket - Video and Image HostingOf couse, Dime's stuff is better produced. Bands of the last two decades had the benefits of better equipment and technologies to put out and album with much better clarity. However, Sabbath had some of the greatest technicians of their era and their stuff really transcends the tests of time.

Compare these two clips and tell me what you think.
Black Sabbath's Into the Void
Pantera's Walk

Interesting similarties, no?

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