Australian Guitar

Even after 17 years, the annual BIGSOUND festival continues to evolve. As always a celebration of the innovations and revelations shaping the Australian music industry, this year’s bash posed a notable focus on audience participation. Gone was the us

The first lines uttered on Bought To Rot set a striking tone for the rest of the album. “Learn to trust yourself,” Laura Jane Grace snarls at herself on “China Black”, the opening track on her debut solo LP (released under the moniker of Laura Jane G

When Thrice make their way Down Under in February, it’ll be their first Australian tour in over a decade. The post-hardcore powerhouse last made the trek in September of ‘08, riding high on the release of their two-part (or four-part, if you wanna ge

The timeline of Basement is one most emo bands could only daydream of replicating. A figurehead for one of the genre’s most lucrative labels, Run For Cover, the fivesome brewed an enormous underground following with two crash-hot albums that drew kid

Three years after bringing the Australian prog scene to a standstill with Aesthesis, the frenetic fretboard masters in Dead Letter Circus have returned with what might just be their magnum opus. The self-titled fourth album shines a rawer, more hones

Hardcore and opera don’t gel in much (or any) of a traditional sense, but Hellions live up to their namesake in that they don’t really care about your rules. Their 2016 opus, Opera Oblivia, beautifully married the pit-starting gruffness of their punk

John Butler’s latest single “Just Call” is a prime piece of rootsy pop, built on his trademark evocative fingerpicking, but it didn’t have the easiest journey into his enviable catalogue. The starry-eyed, loving tribute to his wife Danielle was an id

Ask the average punter who Saul Hudson is, and you’re almost certain to be met with an apathetic shrug. Change your tone to Slash, however, and eyes will light up. “Oh yeah! The dude from Guns N’ Roses! With the sunglasses and the tophat!” In three d

It’s no secret that Slash is a big fan of the Gibson Les Paul. He’s tracked with them on virtually all of his 13 studio albums, and you’d be hard pressed to find evidence of a live show where he didn’t noodle around on at least a couple of ‘em. They’

I’ll admit to having a little bit of a brain-jam over the fact that Fender offers a very traditional, longstanding guitar model called the Mustang, as well as a very modern digital modelling amp of the same name. But the Mustang guitar has its roots

Taken out of the box, the amp looks great. It’s very black, with the logo plate and product engraving rendered in elegant grey. In addition to a single on/off switch, there’s high and low inputs (one channel only) and cream Volume, Tone and Master kn

Things looked a bit hairy for a minute there, as far as Gibson’s availability in Australia went. But now, under the much-welcomed custodianship of Australis Music (and under new management on the North American side of things), Gibson is back and bet

The StingRay is a bonafide classic. You’ll hear it booming out the bottom end of every style of contemporary music, because it gets the job done better than anything else. Released in ’76, it immediately became the bass of choice for funk and R’n’B p

Rocker pedals have been done, that’s for sure, and all manner of sound effects have been given the ‘variable real-time control’ treatment. The first two were the venerable wah pedal – way back in ’66 by the Thomas Organ Company – and the must-have-fo

Legend has it, there are few guitarists who are more demanding to design signature gear for than Steve Vai. You don’t rise to such technical and compositional levels of excellence without being extremely driven, and Vai’s demands on gear companies ar

If it were possible, this review would simply read, “Meris says this pedal is directly inspired by the 1982 Blade Runner film soundtrack, and that should be all you need to know before rushing out to buy one.” But you paid for a full magazine, so we’

The sight of diamond-grille Vox amplifiers is as much a part of The Beatles’ iconography as moppy haircuts and Heinz Edelmann’s Yellow Submarine designs. You simply can’t sound like The Beatles – especially the early days – without a Vox. The Vox MSB

Speakers are often a trade-off between quality and size. The smaller you get, the less good-sounding volume you can juice out of the cabinet. If you want that big, clean sound, you normally need to pay for it, both with bucks and backbreaking effort

Reviews are a fickle little demon in the rock scene. Defenders of them will argue that critics help music lovers decide what new records are worth their time, while naysayers are adamant that what’s printed in a magazine is pointless, because ultimat