Stephan Paukner :: syslog

Ibanez, my favorite guitar manufacturer, has created a model with an unusual guitar body shape which is commonly favored by heavy metal guitarists. Having Gibson’s innovative “Flying V” and “Explorer” body shapes from 1958(!) in mind, guitar companies started to release models with similar designs in the late seventies because heavy metal guitarists found that those radical body shapes match their music style and appearance on stage. Ibanez, being favored by virtuosic guitarists such as Paul Gilbert, Joe Satriani or Steve Vai, has lacked guitars of such an uncommon style so far and has finally come up with a V-shaped and an X-shaped guitar model. (I once heard that such untraditional shapes tend to bad resonance behavior, but I think that’s nonsense.) The white V-shaped one would even appeal me, as it’s not so typically “heavy metal” as the black one.

The video promoting the X-model on their website features statements of a guitar body designer and a virtuosic heavy metal guitarist from Germany. The video is underlayed with musical sequences from the guitarist’s band; extremely fast, technical and virtuosic metal music which is considered to be “neo-classical” because it tries to imitate the complex structures of traditional classical music. Unfortunately, when I saw their website and their entry on Wikipedia, they turned out to be a “technical brutal death metal” band, having “death growls” as singing voice and songs about “mutilating stillborn children” and similar. I already asked myself why they chose a name associating them with necrophilia.

Now, does this have to be? Does Ibanez really want to identify themselves with disgustingly gory necrophilic musicians who make guttural sounds while they imagine to slash rotten corpses? This is ridiculous! What do these abject topics have to do with virtuosity on the guitar? What does that have to do with classical music? I’m really agitated. Why can’t virtuosity keep being linked to virtuosic music, and be it of heavy metal style?

However, on the one hand there are awesome metal guitarists using traditional guitar body shapes, and on the other there are “ordinary” rockers such as Lenny Kravitz who use a Gibson Flying V. And companies like Dean Guitars devote themselves to radical body shapes that are appreciated by comparatively “harmless” metal giants such as Dave Mustaine or the late Dimebag Darrel. I therefore consider Ibanez’ choice of that one guitarist for their promo as an accident.

And by the way, if that guy is so keen on appearing evil on stage, why has he got that boring short hair cut?