A few months ago, we were so pumped for Tosin Abasi when he landed the cover of Guitar World magazine, sharing the front page with legendary shredder Steve Vai. It's two generations of guitar gods getting together for a chat. Now that the issue is a few months old, Guitar World has put up the entire thing on their website.
It's mostly a guitar nerd fest, so some of it I couldn't really follow, but if you are an aspiring shredder, by all means check it out. I've highlighted some of the best parts:
Steve Vai on hearing Tosin's band, Animals As Leaders for the first time:
My kids listen to all sorts of music. And I believe I first heard Animals as Leaders coming out my son’s room. I said, “Whoa, what’s going on there?” I got the record, and the first thing I thought was, This is a new trend in band names. And I really liked it because it was so unconventional—Animals as Leaders. ’Cause there are bands now with names like iwrestledabearonce.
And the highlight…the topic of djent comes up:
What do either of you think of the term djent as a stylistic designation? Is it valid?
VAI: Gent?
ABASI: Have you heard this term?
VAI: No, except like a gentleman or something.
ABASI: It’s djent.
VAI Don’t know it. But then I have a harp player in my band who said, “Who’s Van Halen?” She didn’t even know Van Halen. I said, “Did you ever hear of Led Zeppelin.” She said, “I think I heard some of his music.” [laughs] I mean the phrase sounds familiar, but I don’t know what it is.
ABASI: Djent is supposed to be what I’m doing. You’ve described it already. You’re hearing this sort of polymetric thing, a lot of palm muting and there might be ethereal clean tones over it. It’s essentially what they’re calling what this new wave of bands are doing; what I’m doing. Because you know what djent is? It’s like a chug on the low strings, like djent, djent, djent. It just has more treble.
VAI: Oh, of course, yeah, I did hear that. But I never connected it.
ABASI: Meshuggah’s the originator of djent. But what do I think of the term? I think people need to call things stuff.
VAI: Amen.
Abasi gave a pretty accurate description if you ask me. Read the whole interview here.
