Garza Podcast - 236 - CONVERGE | Kurt Ballou: Metalcore Riffs, Guitar Rundown & Making of Jane Doe

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

Garza sits down in-person with Kurt Ballou. Guitar player from Massachusetts metalcore band CONVERGE. Also known for his recording & production work at GodCity Studios. Their TWO new albums “Love Is Not Enough” & “Hum of Hurt” out now! https://instagram.com/convergeCHUG MERCH: https://garzapodcast.myshopify.com00:00 - High-Pass Filter Explained04:07 - Recording Hi-Hats07:43 - Using AI for Music Production11:29 - Are Studios Important?13:05 - Steve Albini17:00 - Jane Doe20:38 - Learning How to Record Music23:36 - Recording on Tape29:47 - Jane Doe Guitar Tones32:23 - Mesa Racktifier // Helix Stadium36:13 - Guitar Pedal Talk40:28 - Amp Talk43:01 - Hum of Hurt46:46 - Short Albums48:51 - Nails’ Guitar Tone54:52 - Helix Stadium vs Gear Snobs1:06:53 - Amps & Helix Cloning1:11:40 - Tone Rundown1:15:10 - Overcomplicating Riffs1:17:08 - Riff: Axe to Fall // Open Slayer Tuning1:19:14 - Wacky Tuning1:21:00 - Riff: Concubine1:28:58 - Riff: Hell to Pay1:35:22 - Mixing Guitars1:36:49 - God City Instruments1:44:44 - Guitar Rundown1:47:13 - Garza Plays the Craftsman1:49:38 - Brian “Head” Welch1:52:55 - 3 Albums to Check Out1:57:01 - NYHC Hardcore Spectrum

Okay. But it's cool that you know that. Only because so many of bands cover it. Holy? I... You got to think about it? 40. Are you going to figure out if you're willing to admit it? No, I don't like when people say their age and a half.

I was going to say 40 and a half. I'm like, oh, it's kind of cheesy. No, yeah. There's like a... You can be six and a half. Six and a half, yes. Yeah. I'm going to get a taller couch.

That's okay. So I need artist tape. I need a new couch. Okay. I need a high pass, which I don't know what that is. You don't know how high pass is? No. It's a filter.

So like, you know, you know what a high pass sounds like. It's, um, it's just, you know, like if you're, oh, what I'm doing. How can I, how can I, you know, I'll, I can demonstrate it. Please. Are we rolling? Oh, yeah. This is. If there's any dead, dead space, we'll fucking slice it.

It's fine. Okay. So, so. So I'm learning low cut. Okay, low cut. Let's engage the low cut. So I'm actually going to see it. Okay.

Yeah. So we can go to a steeper, steeper cutoff frequency. I don't think you go turn on. Low cut. Oh, do I have to. Oh, no, I got to engage it on. Turn it, engage. Yeah.

Should we be screen sharing here? So that would be a high pass. Okay. So high pass allows high. high frequencies two pass. Oh. You could also call it, I think line six calls it a low cut. They're interchangeable, but usually in the studio world, like on a console, like,

it's usually the first thing after a mic pre, like on an analog console is the, is the high pass filter. So, got it. Like, you know, in the case of a microphone, like, this isn't too bad. But like, you might have the high pass engaged on the, on the mics. But yeah, it takes out the rumble. So like, you know, handling, handling noise on a mic.

There's, there are, there's different schools of thought. There's people like in audio that are just like high pass everything except for maybe like bass and bass guitar. Some people are just like, oh, you know, like if you don't high pass the bass drum, then you do high pass the bass guitar or vice versa.

Okay. Just, you know, the idea is like kind of cleaning up your low end so that your low end is not coming from too many sources. And like, you know, like a high hat mic, for example, like you don't need like 80 hertz from a high hat like you know it might the high hat might start it more like you know 400 hertz or something like that so you just like get rid of all the rumble and like rumbling leakage from that microphone to kind of clean up the signal on that mic that there's there's actually some uh i'm going out the top of my dome first of all we have kerbaloo from converter curvature thank you for hi we're just where does it in it right now we're in it and also a quick quick thank you to taylor young that connected us oh yeah taylor rocks i went on check

got his new studio yesterday it's fucking super nice it feels really comfy in there it's not like it's not massive but it's like it's got a nice high ceiling so even like the even though like the floor plan is massive it still feels like you're in like a really cool studio and like he's got like it smells good in there oh yeah that's very important and um opposite of this place the AC works nice and stuff and he's got like and he has like all the right gear in there and like nothing he doesn't need and everything he does and it's like and so it's like really dialed he also has the nicest mic stands he's like triad mic stands i had never seen him before they're fucking they're like they're old pricey but they're rad try how try had yeah they're like um they're it's

like a modular mic stand system where like there's all these different arms and attachments and you can do mics and you can do phones and you can do music stands and like they're like they don't bounce at all like that they're just like you just hook them on they're just like rock solid no matter how far you boom them out okay yeah I heard there is some some beef with the I'm going off the top to them I'm dome I haven't heard this in years but there's don't there's a there's high hat beef with with mixers some some want to take the low one out of the high hat but I heard what's his name Lord uh Chris Lord Algae yes I heard him I heard him talk about his opinions yes yeah he's like so why would you take the low one out how the high hat turned up so

it's funny how you could have two different opinions I mean He's been a part of some fantastic records. So like, you know, I guess it's whatever gets you over the finish line. I mean, so anytime you engage on EQ, you're adding, you know, EQ works on phase. So you are messing with your phase anytime you add any sort of EQ. Okay. I think maybe mic's selection might be a better move.

Oh, the mics. Okay, that point has. like to filter it you know there's there's some people that think filtering things is a bad idea like i didn't get to that but it's just you know it's different different philosophies and it's kind of like there's just so much like you're managing so much minutia in a mix and everyone's going to do it in a little bit different way but it's just like whatever gets you over the finish line there's a lot of people that are like super anti-high hat mic in general just because like no mic at all for the hi-hat well there's they're loud as hell because there's two of them

You know, you got one crash, you have one ride, you got one crash over here, but then you've got two symbols. So it's just twice as loud. Interesting. But, so the high hat is always like the loudest thing in, in like the overheads. I'm, I usually mic it anyway, because I'm sneaky. Like, I have, I got my guy, like, I'll mic the hi hat. Actually, the new isotope RX thing is like, AI is good at a couple things and removing, like, isolating microphones from me. other is really good and like so the new like isotope Rx stuff will you can take a

high hat mic and you can clean the drums out of the hi-hat mic it's fucking crazy yeah I can fucking swear and shit on this yeah of course okay cool and so then you you know you're left with what's essentially just a hi-hat track it's a track now I'm where my breaking the fourth wall here over there yes and then but then but then once you're left with the high hat then you can get sneaky with with like side chain stuff. So I tend to not use a lot of high hat in the mix, but I will use the hi-hat track to side chain

a multi-band compressor on the overheads and the rim mics. So whenever someone's striking the high hat, it ducks the high end from the overheads to get some high hat out of the overheads. And then if it starts to feel a little out of balance, then I can bring the actual close mic on the high hat up to sort of feel in. And it gives me more.

more of like a balance control of all the symbols because like you know I mean first thing when I'm setting up a drum set maybe not first thing but one of the first things I do when I'm setting up a drum set with somebody is like all right what collection of symbols do you have because like it's all going to be bleeding into everything else so we got to find like like a collection of like pitches and volume outputs like that all work together over the course of this like this entire drum set you know if you have like your china is like dominant over your left crash like we got to do something about that whether it's like position or microphone or just choosing a different symbol like you know it's like shit goes in shit comes out so if you can get that stuff dialed like during the

tracking phase then like it's going to make the mix come together much much easier and much better and feel more more balanced it is uh it is actually like refreshing to hear someone like yourself talk about AI with with audio because I guess people might just assume coming from you always probably anti that

but you seem to you use it as like a tool yeah I mean I think there's a lot of people I'm 52 right so there's like a lot of people my age that are kind of you know

we maybe call them Luddites or something they're you know it's like you gotta have a big you gotta have a full stack on stage or like AI all the stuff and like so much of it does suck you know I mean it's the thing we can talk about all day long but like I don't know you know if it's medical research or if it's like like a tool

that's used creatively or if it's a if it helps with I mean at the end of the day right we're all just trying to get the song across so if it's a thing that enhances being able to like have the song that you wrote connect with your audience awesome if it's a thing that detracts from that, that sucks. And if it's a thing that like sort of, you know, that stops artists from being paid, if it's a thing that like replaces artists. No, like an AI gate for a hi-hat

or an AI like D-bleed tool, that's not like, that's not taking a job from an engineer, you know, like that's just getting them closer to, a tool that's getting them closer to their ideal. And I don't think it's, I don't think it makes them lazier. It just makes them be able to get, towards the thing that they wanted. You know, people always talk about, like, things like,

well, yeah, the Beatles did it on four track or, you know, some stupid shit like that. It's not just like sixies anymore, man. Yeah, but also, like, if the Beatles had pro tools, they would absolutely have been using pro tools, you know? Probably, right? I mean, and the result would have been different, I'm sure, but, like, I guess the thing for me in production,

the question that always comes up in my mind is just the difference, is it because of or in spite of? Like, where is, you know, Like I see cryptopsie right there. Like is none so vile, like awesome because of the production or in spite of the production? And like, and maybe it's a little bit of both. I do love the production on that record. But like, and it wouldn't probably wouldn't sound the same if it was made today.

But like it would probably still fucking rip if it was made today. And so like the songs come across really well. And, you know, and I'm like, I feel like I'm when I'm recording band, sometimes I'm kind of like talking them off a ledge about like, some ideas that they have about production where they're like when people get into this thing where they're like chasing a production that they know from like some other record that they're a fan of. And I'm just like, you know what? That never goes well. It never goes well. The people who made that record were doing the best that they could with the tools that they had at their disposal.

Like their talents, their gear, all that stuff. Like they were just doing the best they could with what they had in that moment. And they made a kick-ass record. And now, it's like it's being it's funny you think about like your favorite songs and try to imagine yourself like in the studio or the writing room when those songs are being made like they don't they didn't know like that it was going to be fucking am i evil or mr bright side or you know whatever the fucking like iconic song is like they didn't know it was going to be iconic they were just like that's another song they're doing the best they can you know back in black they're doing the best they can in that moment um and then to try to chase that like

Like, you know, I think it's, it's interesting to kind of decode it and stuff. But like the lesson should be like just doing the best you can with what you have. Yeah. Then what's your take on the actual room? Because then that's the part two of that where people like, oh, I want to go to this studio or this room because, for example, we're in Southern California. So obviously, I'm a new middle fan. So it's like NRG. Obviously.

NRG. Yeah. But like, but is there something to that? or is it kind of the same thing? I mean, I think, I mean, there's, again, there's just so much minutia that goes into making a record that like, like, a record's not necessarily good because of energy, but energy is part of it.

You know, the engineer is part of it, the producer's part of it, every person playing, every, the choice of drum, the choice of guitar, everything matters. But, like, the thing that matters the most is, like, the song and the performance. Yeah. And like if you, you know, if you like went in like changed, changed one of those things, like it'd still probably be rad.

It would just be sick. It'd be just be different, you know. I think one thing that you can't discount is inspiration, you know. So like if you have like, oh, my man, I love all these records that were done at NRG and or I love all these records that were done with, you know, such and such engineer you're a producer like to then go and work in that space or with a. those people, it might elevate what you're doing because you're just so pumped on like the history of what's being done. Or just like, you know, when you're like off the clock shooting the shit, like getting stories about the records that they worked on or that were done in that space. Like that's inspiring. Yeah. Okay. That I think that stuff like really matters, you know, like I've done a bunch of records at electrical audio like Steve Elbeini studio. And like being it's awesome. You know, there's things about it.

Rest and peace too. Yeah. I mean, he was, he was great. Um, such a cool. guy you know especially like later in his life was so kind to me and so many other engineers and sharing the knowledge that he had and and just being like a good guy to be around um what you learned from him um because he's like a legend dude i learned i mean i think i learned a lot about how to behave okay nice you know like like his his sort of take on professionalism in like just being like You know, he kind of had like a contractor mentality, like a plumber doing a job kind of mentality about a lot of the stuff. Like a workman, like stay out of other people's way, like trust their instincts. You know, there's times when you're going to studio and like people like, you get this feeling that like, oh, if this person's left alone, they're going to fuck up the record.

And he wasn't like that. He was just like he wanted to empower people to take control of their own music. and wasn't really interested in like, you know, management and production and labels and all that stuff. It was just more like really like artist forward. So that was cool. The other thing I learned from him, which is also like something I've learned from other, you know, people senior to me or more, you know, more experience than me is that I'm not doing anything wrong. Right. Like you go, you're like, oh, sick.

This is going to be sick. Like I'm going to meet Steve. I'll be meeting today and like him in the studio and I'll get all this knowledge. Ornda. I'm gonna like, or like when I first recorded Disphere, right? So Ufei from Disfeir was in Intuned. Yes. And I'm like, oh shit, dude, take me to church.

And like. Two of your favorite bands because you have a soft spot for a Swedish death metal. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, especially in-tuned. You know, there's something like where they're like, I mean, I love metal, but like I'm more of a punk. And like, they were punk with like hardcore with like a metal aesthetic kind of. Or like rock with a metal aesthetic more than they were metal, I think.

Like it was almost like punker to be metal than it was to be punk at the time in Sweden. Yeah. Like when those records first started coming out. And then like, you know, Wolverine Blues, which is just like iconic, that record was like to be rock and roll in metal at that time was like that was punk as fuck. Yeah. But anyway, side note. So like, you know, working with Ufe's rad guy and like when it comes time to get guitar tones, I'm like, yeah, all right, here we go. This guy is going to fuck at school me.

And it's just like he just like hands me. well he's playing my guitar first of all he just like hands me my guitar and he's just like yeah just go get me a guitar sound and i'm like no no no wrong wrong you get the guitar sound i learned from you he's just like i don't care like like like no i mean he cares but like yeah it's like it's like he's not it's not about that it's more like you're not doing anything wrong um this i mean this you pick up little tidbits of course but like um It's more about like like I like with Steve or with Ufei or like other people like I'm expecting to get this like new knowledge from them. And then when I don't get it, I find out like, oh yeah, I just got to try harder. Or I just got to keep going.

I'm going to keep developing. I'm not doing nothing I'm doing is wrong. It's just like I just got a like it was there wasn't like a light bulb moment where like, oh shit he's doing that on the snaredom. Like it wasn't anything like that. It's just like, oh, no, I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm just going to keep on trucking. We just dropped some new merch. We got a chug shirt, a pizza shirt, even a hot heat shirt, like the one currently on my body.

Head over to garsapodcast.myshopify.com. That's garsapodcast.myshopify.com or click the link below. Love you guys. Since we're on like the producer talk, when you were tracking and recording Jane Doe, which pretty much launched the second phase of your life and career, correct? Yeah. Um, you were probably watching, uh, because you co-produced with Matthew. Matt Ellard, yeah.

Yeah. So great guy. Yeah, he did most of the, you did. I was still like, I was maybe like five, six years into recording at that point and like kind of felt like, you've been recording since 95. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

And this was Jane Doe was 2001. And I seem, I seem really like watching them seeing, seeing what, what can I learn here? Yeah. I mean, he was like a guy. He's awesome. We actually hung out recently. he's British you know he grew up oh he wasn't yeah he was not not a not a not really a musician more of like uh you know he was into like like kind of second wave british punk stuff like

interesting like when when when um you know when like gas ran out after like sex pistols and people started kind of scattering and doing more their own things like he was like deeply involved in that kind of stuff when he lived over there and came up in the studio system in london And then I'm not exactly sure why he decided to come out here. But he was here for a while at, um, shit, what studio was it? Um, the one with, uh, the one with like the big Trident console, all the Trident consoles. Was it like Ocean Way or? That's not Ocean Way.

Um, I forget. Um, maybe cello. Um, but anyway, he was, he was at a big studio out here. Did, you know, like, he recorded he's, I mean, a lot of the major like Southern California studios like, you know, they have an engineer you're on staff on Tuesdays and they get to do work with all sorts of different artists. And he was like one of those kind of people where he was maybe not like producing like Ozzy and producing like Lemmy, but he's getting to work with those people. But he's also getting to work with like big pop folks. And he ended up in Boston in the early mid 90s like when like the whole like, you know, like post like post like Seattle, Boston was like

the next thing that had like a bunch of like massive bands. like Pixies and letters to Cleo, like folk implosion, Dinosaur Jr. This is a ton of stuff, but he was working with Sean Slade and Paul Caldry, who were a couple of producers that did like, like they did, I'm not actually not sure if they recorded just mixed like Radiohead, the Benz, but anyway, so Matt worked on, Matt had a very like diverse kind of background as an engineer and

And he hadn't done a ton of like aggressive stuff, but he'd worked with Overcast and Brian Faird, you know Brian? Yes. Yeah, from, you know, more known for Shadow's Fall now, but like Overcast was like converges like kind of brother band for a while there. And Brian and I were like neighbors and like, you know, like we had apartments next to each other. We shared an alley and he.

Oh shit. Yeah. So I'd be like inside like doing trying to do. I was in engineering school. So I'm like like in my room trying to do homework and got the window open. He's out in the alley doing. kick flips and like hacky sackin and stuff because he was like total hippie guy like I think he likes the dead as much as he likes metal um but that was right anyway so we were pals and um and

Brian was like yes Matt is awesome you should definitely work with him and because we were considering a few people we actually even considered actually I don't think no I think we considered albini for you fail me um but we you know we talked to a few other people but like Matt was the one that was kind of like that impressed us the most and and like as an engine as like a budding engineer at that point in time like I didn't get an opportunity and also like as a like a freelance kind of studio owner but not someone who was like pursuing it professionally yet I'd never had the opportunity to like work as an assistant other under anyone else I didn't come up in the studio system I was just like kind of I was reading um like what was it uh rec. audio dot pro on the

like before there were message boards there were news groups and like yeah that was my life like before there was socials it was like news groups and so there was that and then there was like uh alt dot punk straight edge and um alt dot music dot hardcore so all our early tours were booked like via the news groups um but anyway so uh i'm like learning from the internet and then like you know eventually like tape op magazine comes along and i'm learning from that but like i didn't have a a chance to like work under people and so I think selfishly I was like okay Converge got to record with somebody that's going to like help you learn and so I kind of like used that as an opportunity as a learning opportunity I didn't I mean I had recorded Converge and mixed

converge prior to that but yeah I think I think I wanted to level up and I and I wanted yeah I just wanted like a little different perspective on it and we've been We absolutely could have gone and recorded with like Steve Evitts, for example, like, who was doing like Dillinger's skate plan at the time, you know, and a lot of our contemporaries at around that time period. And the record, I'm sure, would have turned out great. Steve Rules. But like, we wanted, we thought the idea of, like, choosing someone who is like a little bit outside of our demographic or someone who had like a more diverse, like, I mean, that backfires a lot. It does. When people try to do that.

But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but. connects it's like it's a special that you can't yeah and so I think part of the part of that record being like so unique is like the fact that it was like in some way made by made by outsiders and even the band itself like we it's even in the name like we kind of exist between worlds we're sort of like a fence riding band by nature like we're not we're not metal enough for this we're not hardcore enough for that we're not noise enough for that we're not punk enough for this but you know we somehow find this like space and the cracks between other things and formed our own identity there.

And I think with Jane Doe, that's when all of the pieces kind of came together. Like the production, we had, you know, it's the lineup that is the band now is like really the lineup that made Jane Doe. We also had an additional guitar player then, but he was sort of moving more towards his band Bain at the time. And once we started touring on Jane Doe, it was the four of us that are still in the band now. And that was Matt's first record too? Matt Ellard? Yeah. Yeah.

And then he recorded the first record the first record. bulk of Jane Doe and mixed it. Okay. And then I was, yeah, I was in the mix, but like it was mostly him. And then what did I learn? Yeah. Watching him. We was like, okay.

Teach me something, dude. Um, I mean, a lot of stuff. You like the whole, well, one thing that I still use to this day is, um, he called it turbo tracks. We would, we would, uh, we would, uh, most people now would just call it parallel compression, but I had never heard of parallel compression before. So like he, and this is all on tape too and on an analog console. Of course.

So, yeah, it's like, I mean, I've told a lot of these stories before, but like, you know, like when I was doing guitar overdubs, like, I was tracking most of the guitars myself at my studio on my stuter tape machine. And I didn't have like, you know, modern tape machines there are like you can like, you can like do like rehearsal mode and like programming like punch ins and punch outs. But I didn't have that. So like I'd be like playing guitar with like my feet up on the tape machine and no shoes on like, like, uh, like a running. running the transport with my toes. And so it's like you can't just like punch in little parts. You just just got to do the whole thing or like, you know, in some, some machine, well, this machine is pretty good, but some machines like, there's a little gap when you punch

in. So you got to be, you can kind of only punch it when you have a space. Or the other thing you can do, which I did a bunch on Jane Doe is like comping. So you basically have three guitar tracks for one performance. So you do like, well, I mean, if you have a bunch of mics, that stuff's all getting bust together on the way in so it's like and there's no di or anything like that so it's just like whatever the guitar sound ends up being is summed and then that goes to one track and then but you have tracks a and tracks b right and you can do like so you don't have to punch in like if you fuck up

you do you you redo the fuck up area on track b and then you have a third track which can't be adjacent to a b because it'll it'll feed back because the cross talk you have a you bounce the two to the third track and you're just like, okay, here comes the fuck up. And you just move, you know, you do this with the faders or you do it with mutes or something. And you kind of like, and you do it with vocals like that too. You see you kind of comp together one performance from two tracks. Interesting. Yeah. I'm sure it's a little bit easier now, right? Yeah. I mean, I'm not using your toes. You know, and there's, I don't know, there's something to be said for that kind of workflow where like there's the limitations that that force some creativity.

And a lot of, you know, a lot of pro-trial sessions get really out of control with hundreds of tracks and stuff. Sure. You know, I don't like the idea of, I like, I like the flexibility of recording and Pro Tools. I like undo and I like, I like the automation. I don't really want to mix from tape anymore. I definitely don't want to record vocals from tape anymore. But, you know, there's something to be said for like the, the limitations. I think a big thing with recording on tape is you've got to practice.

And classic practice. Yeah, as time has gone on, I know it's like the modern age and also like as my like circle of friends slash clients has gotten older like people are like relying on their talent more and and on their preparation less. You know, like when we made Jane Do we practiced all the time. You know, we had full demos of all the songs and like you know we could play all the songs all the way through as a band and you know like a lot of the projects I've recorded even this year like you know the songs are written like the members live in different places and then you know they all wrote it in their on their computers and they shared tracks or maybe one person wrote everything and then they like you know like here learn your parts or whatever like something like

like that's happening and the songs being performed for the first time in the studio and it's awesome that we can make records that way but like I don't know like those songs almost always get better on that first tour you know like a song's got this like arc where it's like you're write the song and then you're super pumped on it and you've got the enthusiasm but you don't have like the muscle memory you don't have like all the details worked out yeah and then like you know somewhere like on the first tour or two like the song gets better and like you want to record it here and then at some point like you get too good at playing the song you've been playing it too long and then like that's true or whatever something that happens in this you know the song's pretty good still but like it's not like

at its peak anymore and like so i i was you know i like when i record bands that like play all the time and, you know, can just come in and, like, bang it out. It's, like, so fun to record a band live, too. Because, like, as a mixer to be tracking something live and have all the pieces right there and audible, it's like, it's so much faster because you can be like, oh, no, that bass sound that I thought ruled on its own, like, doesn't work in context or whatever.

You can just get things so much closer to how they need to be, like, during the tracking phase. I mean, you miss a lot of the details. So you are relying on the band being good. and not being, you know, because there's times where like, you know, I got to micromanage people because like, you know,

when you're tracking bass, the bass player's like, no, no, dude, you told me it was four three, but like, no, no, it's one three, or three one or whatever. Yeah. So that's part of like the producer job. You know, you know when to step back,

but you also know when to come in and you know, knowing that balance. I like to, I mean, I scale all of what I do based on, you know, where I can be helpful, how much time there is.

Like, you know, if I'm working on a record for a month, that's different than working on a record for a week. You know, more hands-on if we have more time. Totally. And, you know, I try to, I like to be, I like to be helpful in small ways. Like, I'm not necessarily trying to, like, put my stamp all over a record. But if I can, I mean, it's, you know, it's my years and it's my instincts. Like, it's, there's going to be some through lines in the work that I do. I know that.

But, like, I'm not trying to, like, when I agree to work with a. with a client, like I'm not trying to have them make my record. Like, I'm trying to make their record. Whatever I can do to help them get over the finish line is good for me. But, you know, sometimes people need to be pushed, and they need to be a little out of their comfort zone. And they need to be, like, without being talked down to, they need to be told, like, I think you can do better.

Totally. Yeah. Selfish question. What was your, how did you get that guitar tone? On Jane Doe? Yeah. What is it? Well, it's funny.

Like, you see, we got the Jane Dorn anniversary coming up here, and I've been, like, listening to that record a little more lately and, like, actually, like, listen to the tracks on it. And, yeah, they still sound cool. And it's actually really different from song to song. That was another thing Matt did that I, like, I was going to mention earlier that I had experimented. What?

25 years? 25 years? Wow. It was 2001. Holy shit. I've experimented with working this way, but, like, one of Matt's deals with mixing is, like, Like, all right, we mix this song, cool, all the faders down.

Start over with the next song. And so every song is like a new mix from scratch. Are you serious? Yeah, like he might leave, he might bypass everything and then turn the same shit back on. And he might, but he doesn't like, he doesn't unpatch, but it's like, it's still basically like, let's balance this thing again from scratch. And if you listen to the album with that in mind, like, there's songs where like the bass is bump and there's songs where the bass is quiet.

And there's like, there's stuff like that. I didn't notice that. I'm like, it's funny. you bring it up. I was like jam. I was re I saw I bought that record. I bought it at a warehouse and the past two days I've been at the gym like just kind of reconnecting with it. I was oh shit. I was like man what it all right this is my selfish question. What did what did Kurt use for his amp and his yeah guitar like what well I don't remember everything. Well let me just finish we're talking about the um the whole like mixing and tracking thing about like it was done that record was a

sort of overall more in a song by song basis and less of an album basis. Yeah. Which I don't personally like doing these days. I feel like there's a lot of like, I like to do things more in batches where like, you know, you might learn something about the bass sound on song six that you didn't get on song one. So like, if you mix song one to completion and then you're like, you get to song six and you're like, oh shit, you know what? The fucking racton's out of phase.

And then like, you know, you got to go back to the first song. And so like I like working on a whole album at once. and I think I like the consistency of an album like where you work on like I do everything in one ProDill session so like I'm gonna mix and I'm mixing everything and but Matt had like a very like a la carte thing which is cool and I think it gave each song its own character but it's certainly like a lot of work and it's easy for minutia

to slip through the cracks but we recorded that like the drums are done in three different studios and like guitars are done like in a whole bunch of different places but the main amp that I had on that was like a rackifier. No rack mount rectifiers. I'm not sure which rev that is. Is it the,

is a dual two channel, right? Yeah. Yeah, it was like an early one. I was all about that chip. I've always, I've always wanted to own one. I'm really sad that I sold it. I think I sold it.

I have most of the gear from that era still. But, you know, I think. It makes sense. I've always wanted one of these guys, man. Unfortunately, like, well maybe i don't know taxes have gone up a lot um so so i'm not as good as i was but for for a long time there i was at a point where i didn't have to sell one piece of gear to buy a new piece of gear yeah that was nice um but with the rectifier thing like i don't know i wanted something new and i was

like i got to sell this to buy the new thing and um i did and like those things were they really held their value i remember selling it probably you know eight years maybe 10 years after i bought it for what I paid for it new. So I was like pumped that I got that price. But I wish I still had it because it was a cool sounding amp. And I've had some rectifiers since then that just like haven't been as good. And I've, you know, I've jettisoned them. But yeah, it was really cool.

So I had that and I had, I'm actually not. At the time live, I was definitely playing an orange four by 12, like the give, I think was Gibson era orange. Okay. Gibson owned orange in the 90s. Okay. I'm not 100% on that. But I had those.

And then guitars, I tracked most of it. I was like diehard EMG at the time. And EMG 85, not 81. Oh, nice. And so I might not have even had like a pedal. It might have just been like, yeah. Because, you know, the, horned up. The 85 is like.

Real quick, so this is it, right? Oh, yeah. Okay, I thought, I thought you were talking about the rectifier. No, not that. That's the, the, the. rectifier pre-imp and a power amp. So it's a rectifier. Oh, no, see the black one?

Okay. Okay, that one. Yeah, it was that. I just wanted to make sure I'm 100% correct. Yeah, that's, people are like, Garz, you don't know your amps, you idiot. So I just want to make sure this is exactly it. Okay. Yeah, I know people talk a lot about like revs on rectifiers, and I don't know what rev that is,

but that's what it looked like. It might have been chrome diamond plate. No, I think it was black. So you straight in, huh? Yeah, straight, straight in. I had no I had no I had is I had two gates I had a rock tron rack mount gate so I had a rack with that yeah a corg tuner and a two channel rock tron gate and so I had the guitar plugged right into channel one and then out of channel one into the input of the amp and then channel two is in the effects loop of the amp so I'm like double gating so like and then one thing nice thing about helix is you can kind of do this too where you can do do a side chain input on the gate. So basically you get the full dynamic range of the guitar acting as a gate. So you don't, you know, because like when you're distortion, if you look at the

waveform of distortion, it's just a brick. So there's not a lot of dynamic range there. But like if you look at like the waveform on a DIY, there's a lot of, you know, a lot of ups and downs and stuff. So like the gate was really responsive to the guitar by having it on the front end. And then I use that second gate in the effects loop to kind of kill all the hiss. And so, it left me with like this really super tight kind of thing and I could you know I could have a lot of game but I could chug without feedback and stuff it's interesting because it sounds like you put something in front of the amp and to hear you say there's nothing I'm I might have it sounds crazy kurt I might have it might have just been kind of dined out but like with an EMG it's like pretty

like base starved mid forward anyway which is kind of what I'm doing with distortion petals like when I use a distortion battle it's usually like distortion just barely crank like cracked like cracked open and then volume dined to just punish the front end of the amp. And I keep kind of even do that with like helix rigs now too. I what I might have used was I had I basically had three distortion pedals. No, I had four distortion pedals at the time. I had a muff which wouldn't have been that. I did use the muff as side note. There's like di guitar on a lot of that stuff which is like a muff into a drummer mic preamp and then just straight in. Oh shit. Like no amp, no speakers, nothing. So there's like a sizzle to, yeah, it would be the black.

I'm not sure if it was the Russian. I'm not sure which rev, not the metal muff. Was it the Russian one? It was like the big, I forget which, it's like black and with green text and not green with black text. Like a like the actual, like a real big muff. I mean, there's so many revisions of it. But yeah, I don't know what it was called.

It was like a bigger, bigger box. Yeah, not. Maybe try a big muff Russian or big muff. Yeah, try Russian Big Muff. Or Big Muff Pie. Yeah, well, that black one they used past. Oh, no, that's green. Black.

Black and yellow, yes. That's the color. It looked like that. Okay. There's a few versions of that too. Nice. And there's like, there's some that are like thicker than other ones. Mine was a thinner one.

But anyway, I don't remember exactly what, what it. Revision it was, but I still have it. It's cool, cool pedal. But I had that, had a boss OS2, which was a lot of the earlier converged stuff was that. And that's like, it's like a DS. It's two pedals and one, right? Yeah. You can kind of blend it.

It's like an SD1 and a D. I think SD1 or OD1 and a DS1 that are in parallel. And there's this like color mix where you can kind of blend between two petals, which is cool. I never heard of it until I heard you talk. Yeah. But I would use that like on the overdrive side, just maybe like cracked to distortion just a little bit. And that one's very mid-forward. So like if you have like a vintage tube.

that's just not cut out for high gain. You can get high gain out of that because you're like starve at the bottom end on the front end. So you can get like tight chugs and then you boost the bottom end like later on in the signal path to like bring in the base. So I've used that thing a lot. Caven like die hard OS2 people. Oh, and it was just because like that was the only distortion pedal that Jake had. I needed a distortion pedal. And he's like, well, I got this thing.

And so, you know, try it. Just using what we had, you know. But probably. there's a chance that there was metal zone on Jane Doe, also used conservatively. I just learned this week that it should be used as a pre-amp. Yeah. I just learned that literally this week from a previous guest.

Yeah, I mean, it's a cool pedal. Like, I never dined it out like the way the black metal people did. It was more just like the bass in trouble were flat and then the mid was like fine. With like mid-boost stuff, I try to kind of find the key of a song with where I'm emphasizing the mid-boost. and then like or like the you know like I'm in drop C here you know so I'd kind of like dial it in until I hear that like drop C reinforcement that happens with the mid control and then like leave it there but now I think what I probably used was a GE7 so the boss EQ pedal okay you can pull that up yeah please so yeah if you basically do like a frowny face with the um a frowny face nice with the EQ control

Because yeah, you want like you want a smiley face. If you put it in the effects loop, you want that smiley face to suck those mids. But yeah, if you want, like I didn't use a Berringer, but like that kind of, that kind of shape, except dime the game. So if you put like that EQ, like that Berringer EQ shape on your front end, you're kind of doing what a tube screamer does. Like you're just like you're starving the bottom end to tighten up the chugs. You're boosting the mid range to kind of push the gain and the overtone. you're like you're not boosting the highs because you don't want that clank and then you just dine the level to like make it hotter like you're diming the output of a distortion pedal and that just like overdrive the end harder because the other amps that I used on that record would have been like a 50 watt JMP which is like you know medium gain but like when you gain those things up too high they get kind of like swampy that's your favorite amp creamy that's one of them yeah for sure um you know I've you know I mean, the one that I have, I've had since 95.

You have like a 70s that's modded, correct? You know, I don't actually know how much. I mean, all of them at this point, you know, they're like 45, 50 years old. So they're all like kind of like, they've all been maintained in some way. And they may, they weren't super consistent out of the factory to begin with. But then like with the maintenance history of them all, they've kind of moved in different, you know, like people change tubes and recap them and done all kinds of stuff. So they're all like, you know, they don't all sound the same. And I have a good sounding one.

And Zach, who works at my studio is like a great amp tech. And he's got that thing in great shape now. But yeah, so I use that. I used an MNPag v4 or track sheets for the record. None of them are labeled with like what the gear was. It's just like guitar one, guitar two. And like, you know, I can listen back and be like, oh, yeah, that's me or that's Aaron. Or like, I think that that's probably rectify or I think that that's probably Marshall.

But I don't know, I don't remember all the stuff. We have zero photos. That's another one we think about. No photos? Oh yeah. It's 2001, right? And we're not thinking about like documenting the thing. We're just like, we're just like going to this.

This is like literally like not a single photo. Oh, nothing from that. It's just memories. Yeah. And it's memories and it's track sheets to remind. And it's the, it's the, we still have the tapes and stuff. So you pull up. Yeah, we pull up the tapes and like see what's on there.

See what we didn't use. See what we used and stuff. I have a pitch. It hit me right now. Do you, you should do. You should do. some kind of like revisit of the tracks and uh filmy guys like going through each track listening through the song if you if you if you still have the like the tapes dude cut we've

already done on that oh so fuck but great idea oh keep it no did you ever did you ever um it's it's we haven't we're going to do some sort of anniversary celebration for it this year we haven't kind of figured out exactly what it's going to be yet but we filmed some kind of I mean Matt and I did that. Oh, when? Like December. Oh, it's recent. Yeah. Oh, that's funny when, uh, that when I do any kind of research, I don't like any recent stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I like kind of like knowing like the whole history first. Oh, cool. And I think because, because the recent stuff tends to naturally just come up. Yeah. Like, uh, you guys have, did you guys drop two records? Drop two records this year. I got, I got, I got, I got, I got confused. I'm like they just dropped the record in February and you guys, uh, so this comes out in, uh, June 15th. So your new record. So your new record. will already be out. Yeah. Yeah, I think our new records like June 6th maybe.

Yes, June 5th. So out, out now. Yeah. Because I, I, I, I, yeah, you know, we, we just have, I mean, we can talk about that later, but we have, we just have like a lot of material. And, um, it all kind of came together.

I mean, I guess we're talking about it now. Yeah, yeah, let's go. It's going now. And I heard you talk about, uh, current world of, you're, you're not a fan of releasing, music like every two years. It's like I try to push it to like three, the four to five. So it was kind of surprising when I saw these two records back to back. So this year did a complete opposite. Well, I mean, I don't know that I'm not a fan of that. I'm just not a fan of like being beholden to an

album cycle. Like we're not a full-time band, right? So we all have like some sort of career outside of the band. So we're not like it's not like, oh shit, 18 months. Like this tour offer is based based on a new album. Like we don't have to worry about that stuff. So we can just be purely artistic with the way that we release music. And so if we have music we're stoked on, and it's ready to come out, like we're gonna put it out.

If we don't have music that we're stoked on, it's not ready to come out, we're gonna wait. So it's been, you know, like nine years since a proper Converge record. And we've been, you know, we've been probably kicking around demos for these new records for like seven years. And I wanna say, you know, maybe we got up to like 25 ideas or something like that,

like for a while it felt like like oh yeah we'll probably get like 10 to 15 songs done but then just at the very last writing session a whole bunch of the ideas just like clicked all of a sudden and um you know because one of the one of the best things you can do as a songwriter is to somehow force yourself to have perspective you know when people are writing they get like real pumped on their own ideas you know like they're like i try not i try not to do that it's it's unavoidable you know you get like amp through you're like oh dude i got this news song that I wrote yesterday. And you have to. You have to think this is the greatest song of all time. Okay. Because if you're not championing your song, what's the point? You know, you're like,

I just a thing, whatever. But like, you want, like, this is, this shit's fucking sick. You bring it to your bandmates and then like, if they're not pumped on it, you're a little crestfallen, but whatever. Like, you want, you've got to be pumped on all the shit, all the shit you're writing. So, um, like, anyway, it just like at the very last minute, all of these things came together that we were like super pumped on and we start recording and we realized like we have like two albums worth of material that we really love and we want to give all of these songs a chance to be heard and so we could have done like a double album or we could have done a single album and then a bunch of B sides for singles and then maybe someday did like a deluxe double album or something which is

sort of what we'd done the last one yeah but like it kind of erases all of the songs that you put in that like C and D side of a double album or the things that you put as B sides. And we wanted every song to have a chance to be heard. And then also like especially in the modern age where people are mostly listening to singles, they're not really listening to albums all the way through as much anymore. And you know, there's not a lot of attention span for things. So like if we can like break that up and give them a little bit of time to digest, you know, so you got like a, it's a multi-course meal rather than like a feast all at once, you know?

Okay. And we felt like that was the best way to give every song this chance. And then like, you know, a little bit of the press that I did on the first album, like, they noted like, you know, why is, why is this album so short? Why it's only 32 minutes and stuff. Really? Yeah. I mean, well, you know, our previous records were probably like more like 45.

And I was like, the first thing I said was, Rain and Bloods 28 and a half. Like both Lifetime albums are like 21 minutes and these are like perfect records. I love short records. Yeah. It's like getting get out leave people always this is my, you know, we were talking about Metallica off here earlier. This is like my problem with Metallica is like leave people wanting more. It's always better to give to like leave them wanting more than to give them too much.

And it's like when you when you hear a song where it's just like the verse is like 32 times instead of eight or like or like the range. There's like three verses or they're like, well, we like part C going into part D, but we also like part C going into part E, but we like E going back to D, but we also like C going back to D. So let's just do all of those various things. And now the song's seven minutes long and has every version of it. Like it's kind of, it's like the song version of an amp with too many knobs or something. It's just like make a fucking decision.

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based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Yeah, I've always, because you get, like, the pressure, like, oh, it has to be, like, a certain length, but then you're forcing something. Yeah. For what? When it's, like, if it should be 22 minutes or 30 minutes. I mean, some of that is related.

Some of that's related to, like, distributors in retail, too. They're, like, you know, like, my boys, like, nails. Like, they'll do, like, an 11-minute album. And then they're so good. It's sick. But then, like, The record store is like, we can't sell this 11-minute album as an LP. We can't like put this 11-minute album.

It might be, it might be like 47 songs or something, but it's like, it's like, how do we categorize this? Interesting. And they have a tough time with that. That sucks. Okay. This is a question actually for the people. Nails, abandoned. Abandoned All Life.

Yes, Abandon All Life. People talk about the guitar tom. I'm sure he's sick of answering this question, but I know that people want, want to hear about it. Like what, what did you do with that, with that guitar tone? I,

a little hazy on all the details of between record to record, but usually, with nails, it's, it's, you know, it's HM2. And Todd,

I think generally favors just like the classic made in Japan, HM2, even though he's tried some other ones here and there. And I think it's usually been just like a JMP or an 800. I think, you know, I know we've tried, maybe 6534 we've tried like maybe like I've got a couple weird amps like the Sparrow Sun

amp and the Dean Costello like HMW we maybe have tried those but I'm pretty sure it's just Marshall but like the kind of like the secret the thing that like makes it kind of crustier yeah is um there's usually like a parallel DIY path so and I think for abandon all life I have this like really shitty HM2 clone made by Arian. Okay. Called the metal master. That's like the enclosure for it's all plastic. Like it's not even like a metal pedal.

And like so you stomp on this thing too hard, it explodes. Yeah. So like it was never used live. But I like I literally got it for like, I don't know, $15 or $20 new. Like you forget he was selling them new. But like, yeah. Like no, it looked. It's that pedal, but like it was brand spanking new.

I want to say it had a blue battery door. There's a battery cover, like where it's the logo, that's like the, the battery goes under that. It doesn't go under the foot switch like a boss. But anyway, it looks like shit. It looks like shit. And it sounds crusty as hell. But that, it may be like, maybe even like a metal zone stacked with that into,

I have this like really old all tech of, I think it's 1567A, Mike Pre. Or mixer, Mike Premixer, it's like a five-channel mono-tube mixer from, I think it's from the 50s. Apparently, Ray Charles used to mix his own records on this thing because it's just five knobs. And you could, you know, as a blind man, you could just grab these five knobs. And like, I think there's base in trouble on it, too. Oh, yeah. Your mouse cursor was just over to your left, to your left. Yeah, that one.

Yeah, that thing. So, like, yeah, there you go. So like a couple of distortion pedals stacked into that thing, diamond out the, I'm not sure what we do with EQ, but like diamond out the tube, the tube gain on that thing. And then no cabinet, no amp.

And then blending that in. So you've got this just like, kind of like sound on top of everything. And then. Wait, wait, no cab? No, yeah. So it's in parallel. There's a whole amp rig,

which was like JMP with the HM2. You want to fuck me up. I was like, wait, why? I mean, there's a lot of cool guitar tones out there that are just like D.I. Like, you know, I mentioned Beatles earlier. I'm not a big Beatles head or anything, but like, you know, the, the, um, say you want a revolution. Is that like something five, revolution number five or something?

Anyway, the lead guitar and that's like, all, it's like, like, D.I. right into the board and stuff. And there's a lot of, like, there's a lot of, like, early, like, fuzz tones that sounds like a little, like, combo amp with a fuzz that aren't, it's just like, like, like guitar straight into the mic pre and dime out the mic pre. And yeah, it's a different, different kind of, um, different kind of sound. So it's like, uh, imagine that, imagine revolution number five, but like, grindy death metal.

Um, and that's what you get. Uh, so you blend that with the amp sound and it just adds this like sort of high end sizzle. I've also done it and I may have done this on this record, but I'm not sure, but like, um, In Pro Tools, there's like a stock plug-in, the air distortion. And I forget what, I forget about how all the knobs are labeled, but there's this like the knob on the top left corner is kind of like an EQ control. And if you like basically take this distortion and put it on the guitar track, or maybe the guitar bus, and then like that thing, yeah.

So the pre-shape, yeah, if you go, if you go a little bit like to maybe like 11, or 10 o'clock with the pre-shape. And then like, you maybe have the drive a little lower than the mix down at like 10% or something like that. It'll just add this like scoopy sizzle to the guitar tracks. And, you know, like so like a guitar speaker, like a 12 inch guitar speaker, like if you look at the EQ curve of that stuff, it's just like killing all the high end, which is, you know, mostly what you want. Like you don't want the guitar to be like in the same frequency range as the symbols. Yeah. or the siblings of like a singer's voice,

like a lot of the aggression of that is there. You know, if I want to talk nails, like it just reminds me of like, um, the new terror record that Todd produced. Like, um, Scott's vocals for that, there's a ton of like air on them,

like high frequency kind of like air stuff. And it makes it sound like really throaty and aggressive, but it's like totally above the frequency range that like the guitars are at. But like with nails, you just want everything mush together and not a lot of clarity between the instruments and stuff. So like you throw that air distortion on the guitar bus, and then it's like after the speakers,

and it brings up all this like crackly high end and stuff that's like in the same range of the symbols, but fuck it. And it just makes it sound like gross and antisocial. Yeah, yeah. That's gross. Yeah, that one's for the people. Well, dude, so we got to talk about your guitar tone. So I make this mistake all the time,

and you're another, you are another example is I make assumptions about, Oh, Jesus Christ. Do you guys do blooper reels? Shit, I'm sorry. Oh, you're fine. First time. Well, we are not meant to have a candle on this one. Oh, fuck.

I'm sorry. Oh, you're fine. I'm sick. All right. Time to start farting. All right. Oh, my gosh. Kurt Ballou.

I'll help you clean that up later. That's fine. So I made a assumption about you. Yeah. Where I look at the, I mean, he's part all about. vintage amps, he's probably not about, like, the digital stuff. And we have a line six, uh, helix. Yeah.

Yeah, I got the new helix stadium, rocks. I, um, fuck that candle. Do I have to explain myself now? Um, yeah, no, I kind of, like, I kind of love it when people, like, show up expecting, like, some, you know, me to have, like, JMPs and V4s and, you know, other, like, vintage stuff. And I, and I love that or, like, some boutique amps. Like, I play bad.

for a long time. I still do play the cabinets. I love that company. Yeah. Um, but uh, yeah, there's something about like, um, disappointing the gearheads with using this, using this modeler that I don't, you know, I don't necessarily want to, I don't want to, yeah, I don't really want to like disappoint him, but like, it's, it's cool that like, it makes it about the songs is what I'm getting at. Like, it's like, I think this thing sounds sick. It lets me focus on, the song and like all the gear in the world it's cool and stuff you know you but like how many times you've gone and seen a band and like watch them set up all their full stacks and their massive pedal boards and then they just suck or like there or like everything's breaking all the time and it's

like detracting from the show and like let's just like get to the songs because that's the thing that like I really care about and like this thing lets me get to the songs and then this thing lets me go to a festival and plug into whatever they have there as you know for house backline and get my stage volume that way okay i can have my sound that i've worked hard at to craft in my studio and i can have that every single night it's consistent our front of house engineer just pushes up two faders i mean even my cue the guitars a little bit but like he basically just pushes up two faders and like he doesn't have to worry about the guitars he can focus on like the things that are miced like the vocals and the drums um and it takes

takes a little load off him and it it it generally makes for a better mix and a more consistent mix night after night. I've got a fly rig. So I've got this thing and two quilters and all my cables in one gator case. And shout out gator, they rock. So I've got that. And then I've got like a gator boat that I have two guitars in. And like, I mean, I've got four guitars in this tour.

But like if I, if I have to, I've got this fly rig that's only two bags. It's my entire rig minus cabinets. The cabinets are only on stage for stage volume. If I had to play an Amplish show and I had good monitors, like I could do it. I haven't had to yet, but maybe someday I will. And the whole thing is just like, it's portable. It sounds great. It's consistent.

The sounds are all backed up on my computer. And yeah, it's just ultra-liable. And the other thing that I really love about the Helix platform is that it's scalable to a lot of different units. So, you know, they have smaller units. They have bigger, well, actually, they don't have bigger units than this, but they have, you know, a number of, like, smaller products than this. And then they also have the plugin. And they have the editor.

So, like, you know, I've got my desktop editor over here. Well, let me get out of this. I don't even know if you can see this in frame. But, like, the desktop editor looks just like the plugin. I can probably talk about the plugin because I believe that the Helix-Steum plugin will be out by the time this is. this is out. Oh, really? Yeah, it's not out yet. There's still like rolling out features with the stadium, but, um, but yeah, I was told the plug it'll be out in about a month. Oh, sick. Okay. So like to be able to have, you know, I use Pro Tools at home and so like to be able to have that plugin available to me. That's the same functionality and can move sounds like freely between the floor unit that I take on on tour and the, the plugin that I use in my studio is really great. I'm not like always rebuilding things. Um, um, So I love it. And I think it sounds great. And I've got it like, you know, I've got it just super dialed. And prior to this, so one of the reasons that I went to Helix is as the only guitar player in the band, I have, I have a stereo rig. For a few, for a few reasons. One is just more sound. The other reason is like, you know, in like a typical like one guitar band, it's like, where do you pan things in a mix?

especially in a live mix. And like if you put everything pan center, and there's a lot of front of the house engineers that just have a very monomentality because they're like thinking about like how wide the room is and they want people and the entire room to get some of everything.

So they might just pan everything mono and that's okay. Our guy tends to pan stuff in stereo. So it sounds great and more full from the mixed position. But you know, so when you, are in mono, there's really like two ways to carve out space for things in a mix. There's a lot of ways to carve out space for things in a mix, but like the two most simple

ways are like EQ and pan and volume. And so if everything's pan in the middle, now you only have like EQ and volume to carve out space for everything. But if you have panning space, then, you know, there's more room to fit everything in. So when I was playing like a mono guitar rig, then, you know, guitar and bass and kick drum and snare drum and vocals and everything's in the middle. And so that stuff is all sort of fighting for attention. But in a full stereo rig with like a pseudo-doubler like I use, the two guitar amps can be hard pant. And that opens up a hole in the center channel where like, you know, bass, kick, snare, and vocals can live. And it's more frequency-wise, those things are easier to find individual space for than like if you have a more like full-range thing, like, guitar competing in that space too. And so my first 4A into doing that, I started using analog amp or cab sim type stuff because one of the problems with a stereo rig is if it's miced

and you have two cab and it's miced and you're on a bouncy stage like, you know, everything's moving. Oh yeah. And so the phase relationship between those two mics is constantly changing. So you've got this like swirly thing that's happening between the two guitar tracks. So we want to get that out there. So I moved over to using the Palmer PBIO3, which is this like, it's like a bunch of inductors and transformers in this box. And it, it's like a, it can be a load box. I never used it as a load box. I just used it as like a mic sim type of thing that went in line between my head and my cap. And so that, at least now, now the sound that's going in front of the house is pretty consistent. We don't have to have mics on stage. We don't have to worry about cabin that's moving around.

and then, you know, I sort of moved from that or, or vert, I use some other things like the Rivera makes a cool one and, you know, I used some other analog things and, you know, maybe I would have got to the point where I was using like, like a, like the Waza, um, amp, what's it called the amp, tube amp, expander, I think. It's like a react. Yeah, it's like a reactive load in I are, you know, and then two notes stuff came along. Like, I could have gone that way. Um, and I do use some two notes products. They're cool. I've seen these. Yeah, like, so Boss makes this, and it's like, it's like a reactive load that is an IR loader.

I've never used one myself, but it seems like a cool product. So that's, you know, Boss is a great company. They're not the greatest musical instrument company of all time, but they're up probably top five. Top five, okay. Yamaha, number one. Greatest musical instrument company of all time, fight me. Change my mind. No, don't find me.

Change my mind. So, anyway, I could have gone this way, but like, you know, I had an opportunity to get a Helix and like, there's just so much you can do with it. And like, while like the early versions didn't have like a capture function, like, because I had had a camper before this and I didn't. It just never quite got there for me. I think every firmware revision improved, but, you know, like navigating it was, it wasn't. It didn't click with my brain. It didn't quite do what I hoped it would do. But then, you know, the helix came out.

It sounded great. This guy, Ben Adrian, some friends with. He does a lot of the modeling for them. And he's just like an old, like, Midwest noise rock BMX guy like me. Well, I'm not Midwest, but like, I'm a noise rock BMX guy. And like, so I'm like, oh, here's somebody like me who's doing that, who's doing the ant modeling. And, like, that gave me kind of like a little confidence boost in helix over some other brands. Okay.

And so I got that. And then like, you can't really do capture, but you can load IRs. And via Pro Tools or whatever doll you have, like, if you have something like Fab Filter ProQ2, you can do an EQ match. So if you can kind of dial in a one of like the factory ant models to sound pretty close to what you want or pretty close to like your analog gear, like what I was trying to do. then you can you can design your own IR by using like EQ matching the sound using Fab Filter or like like isotope has a EQ match thing. There's a few others that do too. If you like EQ that IR to like to like another, you know like studio guitar sound of yours, you can get pretty close. So that's what I had been doing prior to getting the, the stadium.

Now that I have the stadium, it allows for capture. Okay. So I'm running, I have this like weird, like very uncommon guitar amp that was gifted to me by my, my buddy Evgeny from Belarus. He owns a music store called Sparrow's son. Okay. And he just, our Sparrow's Sons. And he reached out to me, it's just like, hey, we made this amp and we think it's like the best amp ever

and I want you to have it. Oh yeah. And so he sent it to me. And they've only made a few more. I ended up buying another one from him. They was so good. So now I have two of these amps. I have a combo in a head. You're looking up Sparrow's Sons. Yeah, that's it. So mine doesn't look like that. There's nothing in Cyrillic on mine. But you know, they've only made like a handful of these things. And I have no idea what the circuit is based on. I think that's kind of a secret.

Okay. And like the one that I have, the purple one, big perp, that thing, that thing, like, thing like yeah that's it yeah so um oh mustache me oh yeah i saw i saw a stumbail like so this this this version of me i like we played it we played the nile and mace the other day you have many versions of you i've noticed i'll mix it up you know um but we played we played the nile the other day and um i was like i was on instagram like scrolling through the footage and like that version of me was in the crowd like if the camera pans by and like i don't usually like When people say like, oh, so and so looks like you, you, you see the person.

You're usually like, nah. Yeah. But like this, that version of me was like in the crowd. It was like, whoa. But anyway. Yeah. So that's, that's the amp that I have. Like, it's, it's very DIY.

You know, it's like, all hand drawn. The, the, the, it's a hand etched circuit board inside. Beautiful. It's a hand wound inductor. And, and I've heard, you know, a couple other, you know, every, every, every one of these that they've made has been different to. Um, because I've had a, I've had a, I've had a couple of, I've had a couple of other like versions like the Cyrillic one like had a client who had one in the studio it sounded

different than mine uh and i also have a combo that sounds different but anyway so like my my capture rig here is um is uh is a is a sparrow sun uh combo on the left side and the head on the right side and then the um the distortion that i'm using i got sneaky the first leg of this tour i was doing the My, so I have a guitar company called Godseeing Instruments. Yes. GCI, you know, here. That's the next question. Yeah, I make pedals and guitars and PCBs for DIY builders as well.

But anyway, so I have a pedal called OnSlot. That's like a super mid-pushed, like one knob, high-gain kind of thing. It's got a couple tricks to it. And, yeah, oh, there you go. That's a pedal, yeah. So the first leg of the tour, um, I was just using a capture of that as the pedal. But the onslaught, like, is a little bit lacking in top end.

I think most people would love it for, like, high gain heavy, heavy chug-a-chug-chug-a-stuff. But, like, I historically have had, like, a little bit chirpier of a sound. Like, when I played Bad Cat, for example, like, that stuff is, like, it's more jam. So I'd get like, I'd like, like, a little bit of like a jangly component to the sound. Mm-hmm. So I did like, I made a, I made a, a proxy, they call it proxy cloning in Helix language. Um, but it's, you know, basically a capture or a profiler or something to use some other, other company's language. Um, but I did like two distortion petals in parallel and made like a clone of that.

So what I'm using now is, um, long as time ago, I like, made this this like overdrive pedal that I called I like day coupaged it in Christmas wrapping paper I called it the indifferent snowman and because there's this very bland snowman

and the wrapping paper and you look very like blase about life so I just called the thing the indifferent snowman you're not going to find it it's just like I mean I have it Jay finds some crazy shit sometimes I'd be shocked if you found a picture of the indifference no man

but anyway so I like I rigged up, like I used like a mixer and like rigged up like a parallel distortion thing and then captured that. So like I, that's another thing I'd love about doing this is being able to do things that you can't do otherwise. And, you know, so like much like, you've probably heard people talk about how like they maybe like their capture or their profile and a Kemper better than the relam sometimes. I've been on that road lately. It's weird. Yeah. Well, like, so like when you do like, whether it's like, you know, I mean, STL tones does it too.

where like you capture a snapshot of a of a rig at certain settings right so it's like I dial when I made these proxy clones I dialed in my amps and I dialed in my pedals at certain settings the way that I wanted those settings to be and then captured them but then you know line six they don't know what the whole sweep of my gain control does they don't know what the sweep of the EQ controls do on that amp they're just they just know what that snapshot sounds like and then they give you some basic EQ controls and gain controls to further manipulate that sound but that stuff is in no way related to

how the EQ controls work on the real amp. So now you have this other set of EQs that you can work with that react differently. Okay. I remember Mitch Harris from, you know, formerly of like Napalm talking about how he loved his Kemper sounds better than like whatever the amp was the model because now he's got all this extra EQ control

he doesn't have on his real amp. And he can make it like way more extreme or extreme in a different way using the Kemper EQs. And like, so I like that. So I've got a thing that's just like dialed. Yeah, it's dialed in a way that like the analog amp wouldn't be dialed. Interesting.

Can we hear it? Yeah, sure. I know you're, we're messed around with this like doubler thing. Oh, yeah. I'm not actually sure what you have on now. So right now this is like as I play live. So with doublers, right? So what I'm doing, yeah, I guess I don't know if you,

if you have this thing on your screen, but like this block here. We'll come out after the pod and I take a few pictures. Oh, okay, cool. And then we'll show it one. Yeah, so when I'm using, my signal path here is basically like the top row is sort of like the input stuff.

Mm-hmm. Like we've got, what is that? Oh, yeah, we got the H&B. to if I wanted that. Of course, I don't use that live, but if I ever needed that. So this, this, this, this is my proxy clone with my, um, my like parallel distortion thing.

Then they got a gate and like delay, uh, pitch effect reverb and re-rero, now it goes stereo. So then it ends up on two blocks, two rows on the second, like the B path. And, um, the left side has, um, or sorry, the right side has a looper. Okay. So if I want to like overdub something and play over myself, I can do that.

Got it. So like the overdubs in the right and then like the live playings in the left. And then it goes into the two-a-a-amp models that I was, or the two-amp clones that I was talking about. And then there's two Sends. So the Sends are a quarter inch out. Those go to the quilters that are on stage. And just normal guitar cab, it's not like, you know, not like full-range speakers, just like regular-ass guitar cabs. So like whatever a back line is going to be at a festival.

Yeah. So I don't have to bring cabs in that situation. This tour, I'm using bad cabs with, I got some Neo greenbacks for them to the lightning up. And they sound cool. Hell yeah. And then, but then after, so my stage sound has no pseudo-dubler on it. My stage sound, because as soon as you add the pseudo-dubler, you're like, you know, this doubler thing that I have is subtly delaying and detuning the right side. So it influences the tone a little bit.

but you know in widening it it also kind of makes it sort of choracy and like the wider set apart the speakers are the more it sounds like two guitars and the closer those things to get together the more that they sound like kind of weird and choracy so like if someone's listening to this podcast like on their headphones or on their computer speakers or like on their phone like I'll give you a couple chugs it probably it probably sounds corny and like a chorusing. Yes, you are. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. But then, you know, so like, you know, that might sound, that might sound choracy and weird. So that's with the dabbler. That's with the dabbler on.

And, you know, we could also, we, let's see, what am I doing? Four cents flat and eight cents of delay on the dabbler. You know, it's still like fairly wide with the dbler turned off because it's two different amps and two different, two different IRs. but it's much more center. There's a more, like, stronger center channel that, like, would compete with the kick and snare and the bass and all that stuff like I was talking about earlier.

They both sound. They sound good, yeah. Yeah. So I'd be, like, for, like, this purpose where people are not probably listening to the speakers, like, 60 feet apart, like, at a venue, like, it probably sounds better to just leave that thing off for now. Okay.

Um, but yeah, I mean, if we had time, like, I could also just, like, start a new patch and, like, pull up some of the different things that I, that I cloned. But this is, like, what I'm doing. Yeah, this is what I'm doing live, so. I don't know how to play. Play my songs. Yeah, I mean, if you got any requests, I could try to play something. Yeah, yeah.

I was, I guess we hop into that now. Yeah. I was, I was trying to learn a riff. Oh, shit. Okay, cool. All the covers are wrong. So I want to get straight from the sword. Dude, I want to, like.

I feel like, oh, okay, I'm going to talk about. Nate wrote that one. Or I saw someone do it here. I saw someone do, so we're talking about a concubine. And I was, that, okay. Yeah, someone's doing this. I saw someone doing this. I saw someone tapping.

I'm like, I don't. I might have to stand up for this one. Oh, yeah. Okay. But, uh, you can stand up for this one? So, okay. The thing. In a different life, if I didn't have like us.

If I wasn't a guy in a band, I would, I feel, I'm afraid that I could fall into being like a snarky person on the internet. Wow. Okay. It would just be like, you know, like sometimes, sometimes, like, I hate, I hate punching down, but sometimes punching down is hilarious. I just like, I punch down. I punch, I punch, where punches are coming from. If they're coming behind me, above me, I guess that's, that's, that's, that's a good, that's a good philosophy. Yeah. No, there's something. It's like, it's like, it's like making fun of a little kid or something like, it's like, it's like, it's back.

But like, when I see someone's like wrong cover, I just want to be like, wrong. Oh, yeah, of course. I'm like, so mean. But anyway, I love that people are like trying. But yeah, to watch, you know what is what I, when I see someone doing one of our covers, they're almost always making it harder than it is. Sometimes it's an oversimplification, but usually it's just like, oh, like I wrote this thing in Drop C, but you're trying to play it in C standard.

So you're going like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, actually, you know, here's a great example. Like, our buddies in full of hell, they actually. have toured with us a bunch and have like jumped in and like played this song ax to fall with us and ax to fall is in open slayer oh which is like so sonic youth they were famous for this tuning that's like c f sharp c f sharp or sorry c f c f c f c f f f f f f yes well i was like okay what a slayer did that and that's all tritones c f sharp cf sharp cf sharp cf sharp i don't have a guitar tuning that right

now but I can like well we can we can make we can make the we can make the the the G string or a string whatever you want to call it a G flat right so now we've got um the first three things strungs are actually let's do the next one too oh I want a tuner no no let's just do it dude oh wait all that's the wrong I'll turn in the wrong tuning peg G flat and then that's back to see so then yeah you've got like we're whoa so the harmonics are really cool with it like if you're like

like so that song is like sorry I forget exactly how it goes been a once we played it but like the version of that one is like and to go like tuned in C standard or like drop C

that's probably super it's a super awkward fingering and even just to go like You gotta go like, It's just super awkward. I mean, Gabe, their guitar player is like a wizard, and he can do it. But I'm like, dude, you're working way too hard. Like, let's just like put this thing in Open Slayer and then just go to town and make it, make it easier in yourself.

I love doing alternate tunings. But, but you're mostly in a drop C. Well, it's funny. Like, I'm in, I'm in, uh, I'm mostly in what we call wacky tuning. Wacky tuning, perfect. which is sort of like dad gad and the younger version of myself was like very protective of this tuning because I thought that um I thought that like you know if I revealed my tuning that someone's going to come along and steal my vibe yeah um get my mojo and so I was always like really secretive

about it I don't really I don't care about that anymore but now it's just kind of fun to for it to be like a like a learning challenge being like yeah like figure out this tune you and like here's some clues yeah and um see if you can see if you can figure it out i think the the clues are it's almost dad gad um like or like dad got down a whole step and also that if you listen to like the harmonics like a if you listen to that kind of stuff like like the song Jane Doe, for example, has like a type of part. You can maybe pick out the tuning from that.

And yeah, so that's like, it's, I'm not protective of it, but like, I like the idea of, like, challenging someone to, like, find that. And if you find that tuning, it makes other stuff a lot easier. That's a good way to put it, like, here's the harmonics you've tried to find it. Yeah. I don't, I don't give it away too much. Yeah. Just give them the hint. Some breadcrumbs. And if they find it, okay, that's fucking sick.

All right. So you were asking about Concubine. I don't think Concubine doesn't really use those strings. I mean, like the verse of the song is like, like that's all it is. Oh, dude, I got to show you. What's the first riff? I got to show you something with that when we're off air about that, like a good video of that song. The first, the opening part of the song is like a slapping harmonic thing.

I might not be able to do it sitting down. Yeah. A little sloppy, but like Basically just like slapping with my thumb 12 frets above what I'm what I'm fretting with my hand. Okay. So it's like the same notes but but fretted this time. Hey y'all's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair.

Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Like a think of that.

Yeah, dude. Just like pure noise. Yeah, that's a fun one. Okay, so that's the wacky tuning? Yeah. So the only place that wacky tuning is coming in in that song. There's a lot of songs we have that, like, I could play in different tunings because, like, it barely uses the high strings. Okay.

I think maybe that harmonic is probably the only place the high strings are even used in that song. Wow. Okay. So that's something I'm going to have to look back after this is done. I'm like, okay, what, I'm going to try to tune that in that way. So you see, so you can't, I can just pick up like a drop C guitar and I start like, you can do that part, yeah. Can you?

In drop C. Yeah. Oh, is that, do you have like, is that an A down the bottom? This is, this is A, but this is a drop C. Yeah, I mean, that's basically the idea. I think on the, I think on the record, I maybe like was like this and, and, And because if you go, it's a little impractical to do live, but if you go at an angle and take like one finger, you can kind of get fourth fret and on the, on the low string. It's still the e string to me.

This is the e string still. So you're fretting, you're going to fret on the fourth fret. Okay. With on the east, the e string. Yes. And then you're going to fret on the fifth fret on the d string. Got it. So that's right.

And then you're going to slap at the 12, 13, 14, 15th and 16th fret, I guess. Okay, yeah. No, sorry, 16th and 17th fret. Okay. But if you do, like, you can kind of just do like one finger sort of at an angle to get, to get both of those. I think that's how I recorded it. Like, that doesn't sound right. Yeah, maybe thumbs better.

You know, your sound's like not that off. Yeah, you're pretty close. Oh, wow, okay. It's cool. And I do that, like, I'm trying to think of, I do that somewhat regularly. I'm trying to think of another good example off top of my head. Wow. There's, I'll think of it.

There's other songs that use that, too. Were you just in, like, your room just like, I'm the fuck. I don't know. Wait, does Jane don't use that? That's great. Honestly, it's funny. Like, do you remember the problem? process of songs that you've written?

Um, I don't really remember very much. Like, when a song's done, it's just like, it's just like, oh, we found it. It's always been there. And we found it. But like, I don't remember like a lot about, like what I was thinking about when I was writing or something or like,

I mean, it's just like playing for hours fucking around. And then you happen upon a thing. And then it's like, I know, actually, you know what I do remember about that one is like, I remember that Aaron or old guitar player had a, Where am I pick up? He had a riff that was like, so the,

maybe, I don't know if this, that sounds not really verse chorus, but there's a part in that song that's like, I think he had a part that was like, something like that. Um, that was, you know, it was just like a one three chug thing. And I was like, well, what if like,

we fucked with the chugs and made it harmonics and, and then it sort of like morphed into what it became. I remember that aspect of it. But like, in a, That's that's fun. Like we haven't really talked about collaboration yet, but like, you know, that riff, you know, is not his riff and it's not my riff. It's just, you know, it's just like a thing.

You just bounced back and forth and then slowly, I love those. It's the best. Yeah, it's the best. It's like collaboration and at its best, it makes your idea so much bigger and better than it would have been had you created it on your own. Collaboration at its worst ends up being this like big compromise where you're trying to appease everybody. And, like, hopefully, you know, you find yourself with a unit of people that you work

with where, like, you can collaborate in, like, a really good, effective way. And, you know, I'm fortunate that that that's what I have. Mm, it's cool. Yeah. Yeah. That issue I'm like it when you're in, like, the same room was the one other person just playing something, they play something. Like, no one really wrote it.

Yeah. It's like, yeah. I said, where did that, that's came from the fucking real God, dude. And that's great because then, like, you know, you're always trying to like, you know, we didn't fully go down this path earlier, but, like, like, like we started talking about perspective on the stuff that you're writing. And because you know, like you're championing your idea. It's like, this is the fucking best song ever.

And maybe it's not. Maybe it is. But like, you don't know the difference when you first wrote it. And you got to get time away from it. And the fact that like we spent like about probably, I don't know, seven or so years working on these new records, we had plenty of opportunity to like know that our own shit sucked. Oh, yeah. You know, like I can like be like, you know, take these ideas and like when I just spent a lot of put a lot of effort into writing something

the next day I can't tell if it's good or not but three years go by or even three months go by like I could listen back and be like nah that sucked or like actually that thing that was like you know it's like it's your your effort is so intertwined with like your perception of the thing and so something that was low effort like you didn't have to really work for it it doesn't feel like that good totally but like those are the best Yeah, but then you listen back three months later, and you're like, no, that fucking, that ripped. Yeah, that's fucking sick. Yeah.

So, like, having that, being able to have, take the time to give yourself that perspective is great. And then that's what a producer does, too. Like, like, when people, like, I feel like, I've been, on this tour, I've been, like, reviewing demos with a couple of my upcoming clients. And, like, they've been slaving away over these songs for, you know, who knows how long. And then here I come in, like, from my ivory tower. And I'm just like, nope, yep. Like, that one sucks.

don't you know do this way like who the fuck am i to do that but like also i'm the guy who doesn't care about all the effort that you've put into it i just know about the result like i know that's working and i know that that's not working and i know that like that might be better if we did this and like and then but the longer i spend on the record the less perspective i'm going to have the more i'm with the more of me that's in it the harder it's going to be for me to know what's good and what's not. And so, like, it's a really important time on the, the life cycle of record, like, early on when you can, when you can do that.

Totally, man. I do have a selfish riff. That bridge to, uh, how to pay. Yeah. Can you do that on that, on that tune? Because I was trying to do, like, the, that, like, siren chords. Siren chords. You're just like, it's like, that's the other guitar, but let me, let me, I can just grab it.

Oh, please. Um. hell to pay you know like a a two no that's not what it's the thought's about oh I was like shit I was like some fucking lower

then maybe it kind of blew me away no just like you know like you know your set list uh your set list gets the joke song title sometimes totally um I'm not quite sure which part you're talking about but like that one

that one is like what is like what is it like what is he doing that it was funny thing about the recording on that one is like Aaron plays on that song and he had kind of this one's in regular drop C. Okay, perfect. So now the rest of the world can actually play this.

Sounds sick. Yeah. So that one goes like, oh, this one, we're talking about the amps on Jane Doe earlier. Yeah. This song is, this song has my favorite amp. Oh, does it? Which is the trainer, uh,

YRM. Okay. I bought it for $99 in 1993. And they still only go for like five, six hundred bucks. Um, but it's like sort of a fender, sort of a Marshall.

Um, and the amp can do anything. It's got a really great tremolo and reverb. And, um, I did, I use that amp and I use, I have this,

this, this like 60s Guild, uh, Starfire 4 with a Bigsby. And I used, that as the guitar on this one. And this, this song, the guitar is the guitar and the stereo bass in the song too. So there's like two bass tracks that are hard panned. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, damn. That's it. And then the guitar track was done. Yeah, the guitar track was done live. That's some like Jesus

lizard worship. Oh, nice. The guitar track was done live. Like, so usually like recording this thing, like there'd be a guitar amp as a scratch track. playing along with the guitar, but we open up the doors to the, um, to the, Isobooth, the guitar amp was in for this song and just let the guitar bleed into all the drum room mics and stuff. So it's got like more, a little more air to it. Um, but that one's like, let's tap out some tempo. Let's a little too much gain in this one, but um, so that, that's like the vert or the intro and then like, yeah, when the verse starts playing, it's through, um, I don't, and I don't attempt to like duplicate this.

live but that one's through a smoky amp do you ever get one of those things okay no never been heard of it we're gonna pull it up yeah of course we are yeah um bring up smoky amp smokey smoke smoky amp so they uh mine is not in a cigarette box but they originally were just like they came in a cigarette box and it's just like a um it's basically like um it's an it's an it's an L. 386 chip that is, it's like a, it looks like a little like Dip 08, like a TLO-72 chip. Like it's just a small chip. But it's enough power to drive like a low impedance load. So you can drive a 4x12 with this thing.

But it's got this little built-in speaker and we just miced up that little speaker. So like the verse of that song has this like really kind of small sound to it. It goes like, but it's got this you know uh haven't played this one in a while um but it's got this like uh you get like kind of thin sound um to it this that's cool but uh you know i think so i think you're probably talking about like the lower part the later part of the song which is like a loud version of the intro like yeah it's like it's like it's like a loud version of what you call it like like a yeah and i will sometimes use like pinch harmonics and something like that when it's like not a very

metal thing. It's like a big fan of this guy, Palmyin actually, Alex Dunham. He played a band called Hoover and he was in this band called Regulator Watts that was like, I was especially really into at that time. And he would do like pinch harmonicky kind of stuff in a like such a not metal context. And it was really cool, especially with all that like delay. But what I was talking about about Aaron playing is he had like a little different way of playing that part. Like, Like I showed him the thing and he just never quite played it the same as me. And like, so it's like the way that it sounds on the record is neat because it's like two people's different interpretation of this one melody. Like there's like no rhythm guitar there.

There's only bass. The bass town is so huge on that song. I explained that there's no rhythm guitar. So it's just two guitar players playing the same like lead melody but with like little different interpretations on how it goes. So there's like in addition to the delay, there's like a this kind of offset there that sounds neat. It makes sense because I was listening and like, but there's something, there's like a dimension to it that I can't quite figure out what's going on, but that explains it. There's another thing to you with like the production on that record where like there's Matt, well, one thing Matt and I disagreed about during the process was, was guitar width. So the way that I actually asked me about this recently and I got some more insight on it.

But the way that I thought he did. didn't hard pan the guitars, but actually in that song, he didn't hard ban the guitars. But in most of the songs, the guitars are hard panned. But then he also summed all the guitars down to mono on a separate fader and ran that through an RCA, BA, 6A, which is this like old, very mute tube compressor. That's well known for making things just like really dense and solid. And so he had like, it's an analog mix. So, you know, his hands on the faders all the time pushing stuff.

and so he would kind of like push up this like center some guitar thing sometimes to like give extra emphasis to certain parts and so but the results you know when you've got these hard pan guitars but then you've also got this like center pan component the results when he brings that up is that sometimes it's getting a little narrower and i was like real die hard like wide guitars then and so when we got to mastering we did some like widening in the master um and so i think some of that like swirliness that you hear um in some of the mixes is is is related to that stereo widener stuff interesting because when you have like when you have like two like really balanced left right things and then you put stereo wider on them they just kind of get

wider but when there's some imbalance between those things it doesn't know what to do and there's just like more like movement that happens between them interesting so it might be it might be partly that interesting how are you with time do we have time to talk about your your guitars real quick. Yeah, sure. Okay, please. Yeah. So I brought a couple of guitars with me.

This one is my, so I've been making guitars. Well, I'll just give you quick history. Since 18, 18 was your first build? Oh, yeah, actually, maybe 18 or 19. That was not God-Sity instruments yet. No, but it was. But, yeah, so my dad, my father's a machinist, and his shop was across the street from Parker guitars in Wilmington, Massachusetts.

And, you know, Ken Parker actually passed away recently. But he was a great guy and, you know, he was, you know, a luthier's luthier, you know, he made all these, like, these guitars that were, you know, that crazy, like, Parker Fly shape. Yeah. That was, like, a hand-carved thing that he made from scratch. So, um, and the interesting thing about this guitar is like, you know, like, from like a styling perspective,

you'd expect like Power Man 5,000 to be playing that thing. Yeah. Um, but from a sonic perspective, it was more like, like blues guys. And so like he, it was hard for him to, I think it was kind of hard for him to like find a home for these things. And like, you know, I don't know, I don't know who the artists were that used it, but maybe it was like somebody just like an alien guitar player like a reese Gabriel or something would like would end up like loving this thing. But anyway, so can my dad helped out

can like figure out how to how to see and see those guitars. And so they were buds. And he gave me, he gave me a body blank that was discarded from the Parker factory. And so, you know, building a slab body bolt on neck guitar isn't that big of a deal, especially if you're only building the body and the pick guard. Yeah. And then getting the neck from like Wormouth or something like or all parts or something. And so, so that's what my dad and I did. Just as like a little father-son project where I was like 18 or 19.

We made this like junkie slab body guitar that I didn't play live that much, but it was a fun project. But then, you know, again, like, you know, my father was still in the mix, like, when I first decided to do GCI. Like, I think maybe it was around, like, 2010 or so. I had a slow summer at the studio and he was having kind of a slow summer at his shop and his machines were available. Which was rare, correct? Yeah. It was rare for both of us for that sort of thing to happen at the same time. And then, um...

You just mean like a ton of bodies, correct? Yeah. So I had like a bunch of friends around the time that were asking them to, like, help me spend. out guitars for them. Like, you know, I actually, you know, I helped, like, if you ever saw Todd Jones play on a strat and nails, like, that's a Wormouth that I helped them spec out and, like, put together and stuff. So I would do that for friends sometimes. And then as, like, some people were asking me that and I was just like, well, what if I just, like, made the body in the pick guard? And instead of, like, buying the Wormouth body, like, we buy my shape, you know,

so I did that. And this was, this was actually, this might have been the first, no, this was maybe the second shape I came up with. But it was around the same time as like the original, the original batch. And so, yeah, I cut a bunch of bodies at a shop, started experimenting and started learning about woods and,

um, started like, in doing everything custom orders for, for people and like started learning how like other people's tastes weren't my tastes. And that's when I first started moving away from EMG. Like I was just like, there's no other pickup for me.

I'm not even going to consider anything else. It's just like, I am EMG and that's it. And then like I started building guitars for other people and they asked for other other things. And so they got what they wanted. And I was like, oh, actually, you know, this kind of, this styling is cool or this pickup is cool or this like neck width is cool.

You know, whatever. Like, so I started learning and as when you do work for clients, you sort of, it forces you to broaden your taste because you're not just doing it for yourself. You're like trying to make something that somebody else is happy with. And that's true for record making too. But it kind of, it broadened my taste. And so anyway, I made about like maybe 50 guitars that way, like in my basement in his shop using building with necks made mostly from warm with necks and and then I moved on I had a couple of other short-lived contract manufacturer situations that that you know didn't

work out and but built some more guitars that way and then now I'm I'm working with this small shop in South Korea that are that are really good there's still like you know luthiers that have been trained in Japan and the States and you know in some cases Korea And there's like some C&C there, like with bodies, but it's still mostly like handmade guitars. And they're sourcing their woods internationally. So like, you know, it's like Canadian maple and, you know, that kind of stuff.

And, you know, no like conflict woods, but, but still quality woods from around the world. So like the quality is every bit as good as anything made in the States. Nice. So this one's called the constructivist. I also have a guitar that's essentially an upside down version of this body. that's called a deconstructivist.

It's got like a little Moes-Rite inspiration, but also a little bit of Rickenbacker inspiration. You know, I played in the, the guitar that I used live mostly in the Jane Doe era was a Rickenbocker 650. So, like, I've kind of taken some of that styling inspiration with me without, without of being clone. Like, nothing I've ever done has been, like,

a straight clone. Even things that sort of look, like, cloney, have all have been designed from scratch. And then pedals, too. Like, it's all, like, you know, I've taken inspiration from places, but I've always done my own thing with it. And, you know, the idea being that, like, you know,

if you want the thing, just get the thing. And I'm going to, but I'm going to give you something like my take on the thing. Totally. And, but yeah, so anyway, yeah, I forgot, actually, just side note. I forgot to mention the guitar from Jane Doe is mostly a guild bluesbird. Okay. With an EMG in it. Okay.

But it was like too nice of a guitar. And when I started touring with it, I was like, oh, this is too nice of a guitar for tour. Oh, yeah. Like, I just got to, I'm going to switch over to the Rick and And there's they they may though mine was like a red flame top but yeah that that black one with cream pickup rings that was the shape. So it's sort of like a slightly scaled up Les Paul. Okay. It's a it's a little bigger and I think a little more chambered than the average Les Paul. But you know basically which good which is good for me because I'm a bigger guy. Yeah that red one there that

looked exactly like that. Okay. But it's just like a really nice guitar and I remember like playing a show and like ripping the strap button out and be like oh yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm to stop torn with this. So got it? No. So I traded it to Nate because the Rick and Bocker 650 that I had was the 650 Atlantis, which is the turquoise one. Nate had, yeah, Nate, the one with a chrome pickard, or no, the one with the gold

pickard. I forget if that's the Dakota or the Sierra maybe. That one, yeah. So Nate had that one. Just total coincidence that we both had them. I traded Nate the, um, the gilbert. for that thing. So I just have two of the same guitar.

Cause like, you know, I just, for me, like, multiple guitars is more just about having, like, things set up and tunings than it is, like, about the two, the different guitars sounding different. Okay. So, like, you know, this guitar, even though this was a bolt on and that's a set, and they sound pretty close, it's the same pickup. And let me use in a show it again, so, like, I can kind of use them interchangeably. And so that's what I did with those ricks.

Yeah, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, the, that, that, that, that, put EMGs in those. Oh, wow. Which, which, they don't really fit. Like you gotta fuck with them to like make it work and so they're all hacked up. What are the woods? Um, maple. So it's a neck through maple.

So the turquoise one was on old maple. On yours. Oh yes. Um, uh, oh just just to finish on the blues bird though, um, Nate ended up trading that again to Caleb Schofield who's passed away. So actually not his, his widow might have it. I'm not exactly sure what happened with that guitar. Anyway, so this one here is, um, I actually forget if it's older or

ash. I think it's ash. Okay. Um, you can't, you'd be able, I'd be able to tell if I, if it wasn't a sparkle finish. Um, but the, uh, the neck is a, uh, toasted maple and a roasted maple, whichever you prefer. And then, uh, the fretboard is, um, this is rosewood. I'm usually like, I'm usually like, real big on wangay. Okay. As a wood. Um, it's like a little, a little bit more mid-forward. I love the way it looks. And like this other guitar I was playing earlier is kind of like a little bit of like a spoof

on my most popular model, which is this shape. It's called the craftsman. And it's this shape, but it's usually a wengee fretboard and a wengee top. And then the body is maple and shapered. Can I see this one?

Yeah. Let's get a good shot of it. So that one's pretty lightweight because it's chambered. And like you notice on the tuning pegs, like they kind of look like they're cheap. They're actually a really high quality tuning peg, but they sort of look like a cheap tuning peg.

I use a lightweight tuner on that because the body's chambered and it helps like sort of balance it and not have too much neck dive. Nice. Yeah, so that's like the normal version of that is like much, much darker and uses a wenge fretboard and a wengee top. It's a little more mid-forward than that guitar.

Yeah, that thinks, you know, it's light. It's really lively. It's fun to play. And it uses my slug jammer humbuckers, which you're like, yeah, if you look at those, it's like, it's like 12 slugs, no adjustable pole pieces. And the slugs are all like oversized compared to like most humbuckers. And I like, like, I'm kind of a fan of like more like utilitarian guitars. Like, you know, that's why it's like a one pickup guitar. This is usually like a two pickup guitar.

but this this configuration over here I just have it with one and like I could have gone like full flame top on that but you know I chose to go with like really clean maple which is something like again like it's calling to my Rickenbocker styling like the Rickenbocker like maple glow guitars

like very rarely have much figuring in them it's beautiful man now you can play now you can play concubine play concubine proper you can teach me to something your riffs dude you you you fucking ram my mind you are you fucking jerk sounds awesome man feels yeah i think the strings maybe a little light for you you got a heavy hand little i mean i'm pretty heavy handed too you made me write a riff cool thanks man yeah it's it oh yeah i'll

send you a bill oh fuck yeah um let me honor man it's cool and make yeah it just makes you play like that spacey stuff what was okay i'm i'm gonna remember that yeah well hey it's been it's been filmed oh it is I've got to get some times. Yeah, have you seen that like stenographer that works for Metallica? No. They do like a whole bunch of like just like Metallica podcasts and they like talk to the people and stuff that are like in their camp and stuff. And they have like a full time stenographer who's musical.

And she's just like she's taking notes on like all their conversations, but also like like, like, you know, if you're like James and you like come up with that riff and like she's just she's like writing down what it is and stuff. And and like, you know, so later on. And you'll be like, yeah, yeah. And like May, whatever this is, like at, at 1.21 p.m., like, you came up with this thing and stuff. Yeah. That is crazy. Yeah. I don't think I want that.

Imagine like, because, you know, you always get into those arguments with like, no, you said this. Oh, of course. Or like, no, actually, at 347, you said this. Like, God damn it. Oh, no. I couldn't live like that. Yeah. Well, Kurt, we're going to round third here.

I know that we've got to get you back. We close off every podcast of your same. We do. Yes. And what are, first off, thank you for being here. I know I've heard you say you don't like your, you don't like to talk about favorites. I've heard you say that. It makes me anxious.

Yes. I'll try though. Okay. Favorite new metal records? We haven't talked to my head. Oh, shit. Yeah. Oh, fuck.

Okay. Let's let's let's let I can make it quick. Please. Yeah. So I got this like like so like you know, just to preface this I'm not I'm like not really a new metal guy. I'm like a little bit the wrong age for it. Yeah. But respect.

And I get this like random email one day from for someone looking to book the studio for head. Yeah. And it's like what is going on here? Like is this not the kind of like I'm not on his radar. You know? Yeah. And I start like, you know, checking out the URL and the phone number and kind of like doing the reverse number lookups and trying to figure out what's going on here. It's like a substance

abuse, like, oriented, like, counseling service that is like trying to book studio time with me. And I'm like, oh, wow, what's going on? Is did he fall off the wagon or something? Like what, but like, come to find out, it's this, I can't remember the name of the organization, but it's like this organization that he had partnered with, um, to promote this, um, you know, this like counseling and recovery stuff that he's, that he's like really passionate about. And that was awesome. And they just wanted to have a recording studio as a backdrop to film some content with him. And they were close to where I live. And he was coming to them and not them coming to him.

So they rented out my studio. He came in for the day, like film a bunch of stuff. And we hung out a little bit and like talked about, talked about, I gave one, my Yuginsteel pedal was one of my GCI pedals. Yeah, like, because we talked about pedals a little bit. It was funny. Like when he was talking about pedals, you know, Zach who works with me, was just like, oh, yeah, you like, what kind of stuff you like? And he's like, oh, dude, I like pedals that go like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And I'm like, hell yeah, you do.

I've heard Gorn. I know you like that whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. I do. But anyway, yeah, he was super sweet. We just, like, hung out for the day and, like, and had a good time. Beautiful. Yeah, do you guys have dinner somewhere?

No, just have another in the studio. Like, it wasn't, like, he was working with his people on this thing. And we were, like, and I think I, like, maybe worked on a mix or something, like, in the other room. Oh, that's cool, man. Right on. Thank you for. sharing that story. I almost forgot. You have a good memory. Straight edge and vegan. I'm still holding on to vegan. I'm not, I haven't been straight edge in a number of years,

but I don't party. Good. That's a whole thing that we can talk about that, but that's a whole, that's a whole thing. But, you know, deep respect to deep respect for straight edge. But yeah, it's like, I'm not, I'm not straight edge anymore, but I'm also not a partier. You're very clear headed. Thanks. It's cool, man. I quit coffee on this tour. Oh my God. I'm like one of the lucky ones that can that doesn't get like caffeine headaches yeah so um and my my wife's like it hasn't been agreeing with her lately so like I figure like I'm already out of my element like I'm out of my routine by going on tour so maybe it'd be easier for me to quit on tour yeah and so far it's been okay it's been like I don't know a week and a half or so I had a cup of coffee and uh feel good

and congrats yeah that's cool man well uh what are uh so there's no rules I keep telling people there's no rules it could be any arrow and Any genre, any year, no rules. What are three records for people to check out? Ooh, three records for people to check out. Elvis Castillo. Well, honestly, you were listening to, was this year's model earlier? Yeah.

That record rules. The rhythm section. Okay, so one thing I love in music is a rhythm section, drummer in particular that really propels a song forward. Like a drummer doesn't just keep a beat, drummer is the one that, like, sets the pace of the song that, like, pushes a song forward. And, um, the rhythm section on that record, uh, I don't even know their names, but like, the, the propulsion of that is really cool.

You know who else is awesome? And this is, you're not going to expect this answer, but the A.J. Perro from, um, Twisted sister. Okay. So good about, like, forward propulsion of a song. Okay. Like, you listen to that whole, like, state. hungry record and like every song is just like you're on the train you're not getting off and like

you know like um filthy fill for motorhead was like the same same kind of way like you get on that train you're just it gets fucking going you know and like every fill isn't about him showing off every fill is about setting up the next part and it's like we're not going to do hi-hat on two wrists in a row we're gonna like if you know the verses on a hi-hat the course is going to be on a ride and like it's always like it's always moving moving us forward to the next part so like yeah like this year's model Elvis Costello and honestly like a lot of the the sort of things from that like niclo universe at the time is really cool you know what's fucking really cool is the early hewie lewis stuff when he was like an like kind of working under nick low in in the UK like this

song um i think it's called some of these lies are true that sounds like if you like Elvis costello yeah like you would love this hughy lewis song it's got that same like it's got that same propulsion that that same angst that early eliz stuff that has so i'd say that um earlier you know when we were talking about the convert song hell to pay um you know that is um a lot of like that's like that song from for my my contribution to that song is like worshiping jesus lizard but also regulator watts and regular watts and not a super well-known band uh and hasn't really been they've been doing some stuff lately, but like they haven't been functional for a long time. But um, love the guitar playing. That's my guy, Alex. He's, uh, right now he's building a, he's building a house in rural

Minnesota all by himself, this posting beam beams like this big around and he's got winches and he's just doing it. Um, big, big love to that guy. Um, his, uh, his, his, his guitar playing was really influential on me, um, like the others, you know, this, I'm drawing things from a lot of places, but like his work in regular Watts, especially, and Hoover, I love. So I would say check out the, uh, the regulator Watts LP. I forget what it's called. Aesthetics, the aesthetics of no drag is the regular Watts. Yeah, Watts regulator is a plumbing thing. And so I'm assuming regulator Watts is, uh, that's the record. Yeah. Oh, cool. Okay. I love that record. It's like deeply, like, it's a deeply emotional record. Um, it's sort of more informed by like first wave email, I guess.

And Chicago Math Rock without really being like, without caring about it being a genre with just like making, making cool, powerful songs. So what else? So that's two records. And then a third record. You know, one of my top hardcore, we're talking about this in the band in the van the other day. My top hardcore records of all time is born against nine patriotic hymns. And they were, like, so when we were first getting into hardcore was like the early, early, early, late 80s, early 90s. And like New York was on top at that point in time.

Like, like, that was kind of like the golden age of New York hardcore. But they were also kind of like sort of setting the tone for hardcore worldwide at the time. And like the way that like they were maybe like the first scene that I knew of. I mean, there's exceptions, of course. But they were the first like as a scene that I knew that kind of like was able to pull from metal and pull from punk. and create a thing that was a fully formed idea. You listen to like converge in the 90s and we're trying to do that too,

but we're not like hadn't quite figured it out yet. Yeah. You know, like I'm writing Inspector Gadget Riffs. Oh yeah. And like, oh, you love an Inspector Gadget Rift, but like, you know, it's like what I would call part core. Okay. You know, it's like it's this part and that part

and we're kind of mash them all together. But anyway, um, born against was, and so within that New York hardcore scene, you've kind of got like two venues that are, that are like equally important but kind of to different different hardcore worlds is like ABC no Rio and the CBGBs and born against would be like my kind of top ABC no Rio hardcore band from that era and I think like a lot of like the the taste making like like like the hard work guys good good buds mine like I love what they do their taste making that

kind of and like their perspective on like that golden age of New York Cardcore is maybe a little more in the CBGB's camp. Yeah. Whereas like my perspective and like the rest of the band, our band's perspective is more like in the ABC no Rio camp. So I gotta like, I gotta put overborne against. Um, also like, nausea, uh, citizens arrest, hell no. Uh, there's a lot of real, um, burn was like one of the only bands that kind of like went between those two worlds sort of fluidly. Um, but there was, there's a lot of cool shit happening in that, in that scene. And, uh,

So board against was my favorites. Awesome. I think you might have the most unique list so far. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I try to, I mean, the deep respect to everybody's list, but, like, I try to, like, come out with, like, a little, an alternate perspective on things. Oh, yeah. People have something to check out.

Yeah. Well, there's so much, like, with hardcore. It's the funny thing with, like, hardcore, especially. And this is probably true with other genres, too. But, like, I think every little subgenre of hardcore sort of thinks of that. themselves as the real hardcore. Oh my. And then the other subgenres are some like sort of it requires a prefix or a suffix to

describe that subgenre, you know, but like if you go, you know, if you think, like I think, most people I think would agree that like the beginnings of hardcore is like minor threat, black flag, um, bad brains and like you start drawn straight lines between those and like modern things. It's like, like, why does that? thing get to be hardcore and this is not when they both when they both uh oh equal influence from the the the various like founding bands you know um so like i like to like remind people that like hardcore is a is a big spectrum of things and a lot of it's great awesome yeah well uh so

just so people know uh love is not enough came out in february yeah and uh home of hurt hum of hurt of hurt is out now. Yes. Because it comes out a week a week after. So two records, one year. You have a lot of music to check out. I figure we got three or four more albums coming out this year. Oh, sure.

Hell yeah. Well, Kurt, thank you for your time, man. Yeah, it's been awesome. Thank you so much for having me. This is a pleasure, man. Thank you. All right. All right.

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