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Daron Malakian doesn’t believe everything he writes should be recorded right away, and he doesn’t craft songs in front of a computer with a DAW. “I guess I’m old school that way,” he confesses. “I just sit with my guitar on my couch, and if I come up with a good idea I record it on my [smartphone] voice memo.” Over time, he’ll go back to those ideas, repeatedly, whenever he picks up his guitar. “I entertain myself that way, playing with it like a toy, and then, sometimes years down the line, I record it.”-YouTubeWhether with System of a Down or his own band Scars on Broadway, Malakian’s melting-pot songwriting alchemy draws as much from his Eastern (Armenian) heritage as it does his Western (American) influences. This unforced approach to songcraft has been at the heart of his success ever since he burst onto the scene with System of a Down’s eponymous debut in 1998. System released Toxicity in 2001, featuring their controversial, breakout single “Chop Suey!” and the epic, requiem for life’s meaning, “Aerials.” In 2005, they released two albums, Mezmerize and Hypnotize, the former featuring “B.Y.O.B,” which earned them a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. For a band that only released five full-length albums between 1998 and 2005—three of which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200—System of a Down sure left an indelible imprint on hard rock and heavy metal with their socially provocative lyrics and drop-tuned guitar manifestos.
Malakian launched Scars on Broadway and released their self-titled debut in 2008 largely because System had become inactive. In 2018, he issued Dictator, simultaneously rebranding the outfit as Daron Malakian and Scars on Broadway, citing the fact that he envisioned a rotating cast of musicians rather than a singular lineup. The third Scars album, Addicted to the Violence, dropped on July 18. On each record, Scars delivers lyrics that are in line with the social themes that fuel System’s worldview. Musically, however, Malakian doesn’t seem bound by genres or interested in recreating the success of past endeavors. The binding ingredient in his sound is simply to be honest as an artist. “I have to be open to using whatever colors the song is asking for.”“I’m going to make a Beatles reference, but I always want to be careful,” he clarifies. “I’m not putting myself on their level, but when you listen to the Beatles and you hear, [sings] ‘Michelle, ma belle…,’ then ‘Helter Skelter,’ then ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,’ it shares the same DNA, but it’s so different stylistically. I’m not saying I achieved that on the same level, but I like artists that go through phases.” He cites Iggy Pop’s The Idiot, produced by David Bowie, as a prime example. “When you listen to that album it’s just so different from the Stooges. Having said that, the Ramones kept the same formula, and I freaking love the Ramones, so nothing against those guys, but it’s not what I do.”Take “The Shame Game” on Addicted to the Violence. After the up-tempo, aggressive, one-two-three socio-political punch of “Killing Spree,” “Satan Hussein,” and “Done Me Wrong,” the mid-tempo song drops in, grabbing the listener’s attention with a dark, foreboding guitar part that completely shifts the tenor of the album, from heavy-on-the-riffs cultural insanity to mid-tempo atmospheric musical empathy. It’s an epic detour that enhances not only the track listing but exemplifies the yin and yang of Malakian’s songwriting, whether it’s the back and forth between mid- and up-tempo numbers or the amalgam of emotions and influences present in any given tune. Most importantly, “The Shame Game” reflects his patience when it comes to crafting a song, and is a great example of how Malakian can sometimes spend years toying with an idea. “I used to start that song with the vocals: [sings] ‘Ain’t no shame in your game,’ but I was never really happy with it,” he explains. “I even recorded it that way when I first started working on this album during the pandemic.” One day, while sitting with his guitar in his living room, the intro 6-string part spilled out. “I didn’t even really come up with it for ‘Shame Game,’” Malakian admits. “But when I put it there, it completed the song. And that only happened years after I wrote the bulk of the tune.”Malakian practices this unobtrusive approach to songcraft not by imposing his ego onto his ideas, but rather by allowing the song to tell him what it needs. “If I didn’t have moments like ‘Shame Game’ or ‘Addicted to the Violence’ or ‘You Destroy You,’ it wouldn’t feel like me,” he explains, citing three songs from his new album that most embody his Armenian upbringing and broad musical palette. “I can’t just pick three colors and say, ‘I’m only going to use these colors for this piece of work.’ I have to be open to using whatever colors the song is asking for. Sometimes it’s going to be heavy and you’re going to want to mosh, sometimes it’s going to be emotional and you’ll want to sing along, and sometimes you’re going to laugh because it’s freaking ridiculous and funny and kind of stupid. And those are all the sides of human emotion I’ve always tried to express in my writing.”
Malakian’s view is that he is merely channeling whatever it is the universe has to offer, and his lack of an agenda creates the necessary space for the creative juices to flow. It’s one of the reasons he gives the songwriting process time. “I just let things happen very naturally, and whatever sticks with me, sticks with me,” he attests. “Sometimes I don’t even feel responsible for it, like, ‘How the fuck did that just come out of me?’ Everything I do is subconscious.” When System first came out, for example, he says people would often focus on the Armenian influence in their music. “We were like, ‘We’re really not trying to write like that.’ It’s just part of the culture we’ve been around, so it’s bleeding into what we’re doing without us really trying to make that happen. It just happens.”Daron Malakian’s GearGuitars1962 Gibson Les Paul SG Standard1968 Gibson ES-335AmpDave Friedman-modded ’70s Marshall JMP100EffectsBoss DD-6 Digital DelayMXR M101 Phase 90Strings and PicksErnie Ball 2215 Skinny Top Heavy Bottom (.010–.052)Jim Dunlop Delrin Triangle .96 mm picksMalakian grew up in Los Angeles and went to an Armenian private school, where he also attended church. It was there he first got into music, via singing, long before picking up a guitar. “I would sing Armenian church-chant kinds of things,” he recalls. He subsequently wrote a lot of the melodies in System of a Down (“Serj [Tankian, System lead vocalist] might be singing them, but I wrote a lot of those vocal lines”), and is the main lyricist and singer in Scars. His family lived in a small apartment when he was an adolescent, so he couldn’t have any loud instruments. He actually wanted to be a drummer, but didn’t get his first instrument until his family moved into a house when he was 11, and he finally got his own bedroom. “Guitar happened by accident,” he says. “I’m happy that it happened, but my parents didn’t buy me a drum set because you couldn’t turn it off. [laughs] To this day, I’m more interested in vocalists and drummers than I am guitar players.”“I actually have to stretch myself to get bluesy.”When Malakian’s parents did eventually buy him a small amplifier and a guitar, he says, “I was like, ‘Alright, this is what I’ve got. Let me see what I can do with this thing.’” He spent hours in his room playing, but instead of focusing on guitar chops, songwriting became his passion. “I found my own voice through writing songs,” he recalls. He’s so song-driven, in fact, that he wrote much of the first Scars record primarily using synthesizers and drum machines, which imbued the early demos with “electronic-goth vibes.” When he assembled a band, he introduced those songs to the unit with his guitar. “Songs like ‘Funny,’ ‘They Say,’ ‘Whoring Streets’ [from Scars on Broadway], and even ‘Guns Are Loaded’ [fromDictator] were all written on synthesizers before becoming guitar-driven rock songs,” he admits. When he transitioned them to guitar for band rehearsals, he says, “I found myself playing things that I wouldn’t have come up with had I come up with them on the guitar.”The solo in “Done Me Wrong” is an example of how the Armenian influence can seep into Malakian’s songwriting with a bit more intentionality, and that it’s not necessarily the guitar that needs to be the focal point of his tunes, even when soloing. “The solo that you hear in the middle of the song, that keyboard, synthesizer-style, is the type of solo that you’ll hear in Armenian wedding-pop-dance music,” he explains. “I co-wrote that song with my guitar player, Orbel Babayan, and it drives very much like Deep Purple in the way that the rhythm moves. And like Deep Purple, we wanted that kind of solo, not in a neoclassical way, but more like what we call ‘Rabiz’ in Armenian music.”Malakian says that blues-rock-based riffs and motifs don’t come as naturally to him as they would to someone who was raised on American rock ’n’ roll. Conversely, styles like Rabiz do come more naturally to him than they might to your average Westerner. “I actually have to stretch myself to get bluesy,” he admits. “That’s just because of where my family comes from and the community that I grew up in. But I was born and raised in the United States, so I was influenced by rock, metal, and pop radio, too.”“I always tell people when you put out an album it’s forever.”Ever since System’s Mezmerize and Hypnotize albums, Malakian has pretty much kept the same “heavy” guitar tone for recording. His main amp is a Dave Friedman-modded Marshall 100-watt JMP100 from the ’70s. For guitars, he relies on his 1962 Gibson Les Paul SG Standard and a 1968 Gibson ES-335. “We had the fires in L.A. back in January, and I had to evacuate,” he recalls. “I left all my guitars except for those two. I cannot replace them.” For recording, he generally stacks those guitars on top of each other. “The semi-hollowbody just explodes sonically, so I often use that for my heavy tone.” During System’s heyday, he layered a lot of guitars on top of each other, but with Scars, he doesn’t. “On this record, I didn’t really bust out a million guitars,” he says of Addicted to the Violence. He doesn’t employ many effects, either. “Sometimes I’ll use a phaser or a delay, but I’ve never been that crazy about using effects.” A hallmark of Malakian’s guitar sound is the crispness and crunchiness of his rhythm tone, a testament to these vintage axes and his minimalist approach. Malakian’s early relationship with Rick Rubin, with whom he co-produced System of a Down’s albums, also had a significant impact on his songwriting and record-making ethos. “I’ve never had another producer aside from Rick Rubin, so his production style is what I bring to my mindset—it’s not technical at all,” he explains. “He’s someone who guides you on a journey and gives you advice.”
When Malakian wrote “Lost in Hollywood” [from Mezmerize] and brought the song to the band, Rubin looked at him and said, “It’s good, but it’s not finished.” Malakian recalls, “I thought it was finished, but that night I got home and that whole middle section came out of me. [sings] “I was standing on the wall, feeling 10 feet tall…’ It came out of nowhere.” Now, he says, he can’t even imagine the song without that part. “It’s the best part of the whole fucking song,” he attests. “Did he turn a knob? Did he fine-tune my guitar sound? No, but he made my song better just by giving me a little nudge and saying, ‘I don’t think it’s finished.’ I hear some people have experiences with Rick and they’re like, ‘He didn’t do anything.’ If you want your hand held through the whole fucking process and someone to sit there to be your motivation while you’re doing your guitar tracks, he’s not that guy.”
At this point in his career, Malakian has the luxury of not having to shoehorn his creativity into record company deadlines or marketing campaigns. He likens his artistic mindset, which leans towards capturing moments of divine inspiration, to preparing a meal. “I always tell people that when you put out an album it’s forever,” he says. “And because it’s forever, I don’t mind taking forever to finish that thing that’s going to be forever. You don’t serve a meal until it’s done cooking. And I’m in no rush.” He laughs. “It’s done when it’s done, and it will taste better to you that way.” YouTubeListen to Daron Malakian and Scars on Broadway’s Addicted to the Violence in its entirety.

Declan Mehrtens and Gus Romer brought the heat for the punk quartet’s storming spring headline tour.Australian punks Amyl and the Sniffers have had a pretty good year. In October 2024, they released their third full-length, Cartoon Darkness, and opened a run of North American shows for Foo Fighters. This year, they warmed up the stage for the Offspring for a handful of shows in Brazil, then tore off across the United States and Canada for a headlining tour.Ahead of their stopover at Nashville’s Marathon Music Works, PG’s Chris Kies met with guitarist Declan Mehrtens and bassist Gus Romer to see what weapons the Aussie invaders are using to conquer the music world.Brought to you by D’Addario 300 ClubMehrtens reckons he’s played around 300 gigs with this trusty Gibson Explorer, and it was used on just about every track on Cartoon Darkness. While recording, he equipped it with flatwound strings and a Lollar P-90 pickup in the bridge, but for tour, it’s got a Seymour Duncan Saturday Night Special in the bridge in addition to its stock neck pickup. It’s tuned a half-step down, and an identical (though less beat-up) Explorer is on hand in case this first one goes down.Deluxe DreamsThis Fender Telecaster Deluxe comes out for the set’s softest song, “Big Dreams.”Marshall and FriendsIn addition to his beloved JCM800, Mehrtens is running a Hiwatt Custom 100, a model he discovered in Foo Fighters’ studio. Both are dialled in for a general-purpose rock tone, and an always-on Daredevil Drive-Bi, kept behind the stacks, runs into the Hiwatt to push it into breakup.Declan Mehrtens’ PedalboardThe jewel of Mehrtens’ board is his SoloDallas Schaffer Replica, famous for its recreation of Angus Young’s guitar tone. In addition, he runs a TC Electronic PolyTune 3 Noir, Electro-Harmonix Soul Food modded with LED diodes, MXR Micro Flanger, two MXR Carbon Copy Minis, and a Vox wah pedal. A switcher with six loops, built by Dave Friedman, manages the changes.P for PunkRomer plays this Fender Precision Bass, which is either a 2023 or 2024 model, though he insists the “P” in P bass stands for “punk.”Three-Headed BeastRomer’s signal is split into three channels: One split comes after his tuner, and runs clean to front-of-house, another channel runs direct and dirty from this Ampeg SVT Classic, and the last runs through his cabinet into a Sennheiser MD 421.Gus Romer’s PedalboardRomer’s board, furnished with the help of Mehrtens, gets right to the point: It features a TC Electronic PolyTune 3, a Boss ODB-3, and an MXR Distortion+.Gibson Explorer Fender Deluxe Telecaster Marshall JCM800 TC Electronic PolyTune 3 Noir MXR Carbon Copy Mini MXR Micro Flanger EHX Soul Food Vox wah pedal Boss ODB-3 MXR Distortion+ TC Electronic PolyTune 3 Fender Precision Bass Ampeg SVT Classic Seymour Duncan Saturday Night Special

As Kill Screen upgrades to the fourth dimension, the Nerd himself takes the time to talk all things metal.
The post KILL SCREEN 067: Angry Video Game Nerd James Rolfe of REX VIPER Is Happy to Talk Metal appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

At the end of the very thorough—and essential—manual that accompanies the Asheville Music Tools APH-12 phaser, designer Rick “Hawker” Shaich sweetly dedicates the pedal to the memory of the Grateful Dead’s bassist Phil Lesh. In fact, there are several references to the Dead in the manual—most pertaining to the APH-12’s ability to mimic Jerry Garcia’s envelope filter tones. But it is probably Lesh, the Dead’s relentless experimentalist, that would have appreciated the impressive, immersive APH-12 the most. Because while the all-analog APH-12 excels in rich conventional phaser sounds, it is capable of radical filtering and EQ effects, vibrato, tremolo, ring modulation, and more that would have been right at home on 1968’s Anthem of the Sun, the Dead’s mad-scientist production apotheosis. But you certainly don’t need to be a Deadhead to appreciate the sounds and craft that distinguish the APH-12. If you dig peppering your own productions and compositions with distinctive, weird, arresting textures—or just buttercream-thick phaser sounds—the APH-12 is a feast of treats that can transform a tune. 12 Stages, Infinite RoadsThe fact that Hawker once worked as an engineer for Moog is a less-than-well-kept secret. And it’s impossible to not be excited about the APH-12 in the context of the Moogerfooger MF-103 phaser, a Bob Moog modulation masterpiece that Hawker helped refine during his tenure. With its 12-stage capability, drive control, and LFO section, many aspects of the APH-12’s features and functionality mirror those of the MF-103. But the APH-12 has a very different architecture. Where the MF-103 featured just 6- and 12-stage phase effects, the APH-12 is capable of 2- and 4-stage phasing as well as single-stage and odd-numbered staging that yield unusual, colorful out-of-phase effects. It also features an envelope-controlled mode that enables dynamic command of the modulation.Learning how all these functions work together takes time. Though Hawker initially conceived the APH-12 as the company’s first analog/digital hybrid pedal, his ears led him back to an all-analog design. That means you can’t rely on presets to capture sounds derived from sensitive and interactive controls. You have to pay attention and probably take notes. But the process of decoding the APH-12’s secrets is instructive, engaging, immersive, and intuitive in its way, and learning its language is addictive stuff that often yields musical gold.You Can Always Go HomeThough it’s easy to get into very strange places with the APH-12, getting back to a safe space is as simple as selecting the 1-, 2-, 4-, or 6-stage phasers and backing off the phase amount, LFO resonance, and sweep controls. The latter, which adjusts the center frequency for the modulations, effectively works like a tone control, taming and enhancing peaks that can make a phase cycle super intense or subtly woven through the fabric of a musical phrase. It’s not only easy to return to these more modest phase effects if you get lost in the weeds, but they are deeply satisfying and, in terms of depth and character, rival or better my own favorite phasers. This capacity for thick, rubbery versions of classic 4- and 6-stage phase controls is enough to make a case for replacing every phaser in your collection with the APH-12. But it’s the pedal’s ability to deliver the unexpected that makes the hefty near-$400 price tag a value.The odd-numbered stages, for example, are as impressive for their filtering effects as modulation. In the single-stage mode, the modulations can double as tremolo pulse, but the frequency cancellations lend a dirty ’60s attitude to guitar lines that would serve one of Sergio Leone’s grittiest spaghetti Western scenes. The 3-stage setting is home to some of my favorite colors in the APH-12. It can sound nearly as chewy as the 4-stage setting, but has a funky, vowel-ly attack that bridges the gap between Funkadelic and Pink Floyd and, for its narrower tone emphasis, sounds more focused in a multi-instrument mix. “This capacity for thick, rubbery versions of classic 4- and 6-stage phase controls is enough to make a case for replacing every phaser in your collection.”The 5-stage mode, like the 3-stage setting, is home to some of the most Garcia-like tones, especially when used with the dynamic envelope setting on the modulation switch. But in 5-stage mode you also start to hear more pronounced variations on the APH-12 and the most mold-breaking tones. Here you’ll find modulations that are both elastic and vocal but also effectively lo-fi in a distant radio broadcast kind of way. This tendency is beautifully enhanced in 9-stage mode, and you’re likely to find a lot of sound designers lurking here, crafting dark submarine resonances and the atmosphere of chains clanking in an empty, hulking space freighter.The odd-number modes aren’t all, well, odd. Slow-motion phase cycles with a heap of drive (which uses a JFET saturation stage to enhance even-order harmonics) can produce dreamy filter sweeps that are super-dramatic without being sprawling and bossy. The APH-12’s 12-stage mode is another place where sound designers and players seeking simple but pronounced coloration will co-exist. Here again, the APH-12 excels at shaping intense modulations that can be slotted surgically in a mix. But I was also able to construct tone environments equally well suited for a David Lynch-led field trip to trans-dimensional realms populated by metallic seagulls, distant throbbing motors, and fragments of fractured interstellar communications.The VerdictThe sounds highlighted here are a fraction of what the APH-12 can do. And while there are significant differences under the hood, anyone who has been thwarted in the secondhand Moog MF-103 market will find much to sate their hunger here. But outside any comparisons to a discontinued classic, the North Carolina-built APH-12 is an outstanding modulation, filtering, and noise machine that can bring the weirdness and the ruckus one second and slide back into slippery, sonorous, rich, and gliding phase tones in the next. It’s an expensive pedal, but you could replace multiple phasers and noisemakers sitting in your closet with this and never miss them—unless you get a hankering for your Phase 90’s one-knob, no-brainer simplicity. Factor in the considerable R&D and the many years of engineering experience behind the execution of this fine modulator and that $397 price tag starts to look like a very fair price—and a smart investment—indeed.

Winnipeg band Propagandhi’s new record was fully written when bassist Todd Kowalski showed up to a rehearsal with a rough, weird demo of a slow, lurching metal song. Vocalist and guitarist Chris Hannah, who splits principal songwriting duties with Kowalski, was pissed. “I’m like, ‘For fuck’s sake man, at the eleventh hour? Are you serious? Another song and one where I have to learn a new guitar technique? Whatever.’” The band—Kowalski, Hannah, drummer Jord Samolesky, and guitarist Sulynn Hago—began playing the song, which is now called “Guiding Lights,” and within a short time, Hannah realized that they’d just found the opening track for their new album. “You never know how something’s gonna unfold,” he says, “and you have to remain open to changes as the writing goes along.”At Peace is Propagandhi’s eighth full-length, and their first in eight years, after 2017’s Victory Lap. It features some of their more experimental compositions, like the aforementioned opener, and the prog-metal ballad “Stargazing,” which is one of the gentlest songs in Propagandhi’s almost 40 years together. There’s the slowed-down hard rock of “No Longer Young,” and the sort of late-career downtempo metal of “Benito’s Earlier Work” and “Day By Day.” There are doses of skate-punk, thrash, and melodic hardcore here, too, but At Peace certainly marks a new speed for Propagandhi.“We almost pushed ourselves in the opposite direction that we usually push ourselves,” says Hannah. “We’re usually looking for ‘frantic and dense, out of control.’ This record, we thought, ‘We’re going to push ourselves in the opposite direction, out of our comfort zone, into under-control, lots of space, room for things to bloom.’ For us, that meant slowing down.”“I was working on just being able to play simple, mechanical things at much slower speeds. I realized when I did it for a long time, and I got okay at it, when I sped it up, it was so much better.”The tempos of some of the songs on At Peace were uncomfortably slow. For decades, Propagandhi has been a band that either plays fast or really fast, and Hannah simply didn’t know how to play riffs at much less than breakneck speed. Judas Priest’s 2018 record Firepower was an energetic inspiration for the new approach. “There’s an essence to that record that I think we were all hoping to evoke in writing these songs,” says Hannah. “It’s not an aesthetic thing, like we don’t have any of the ornamentation or performance capabilities of the guys in Judas Priest, but we wanted to honor something that we heard in that record, and I think that drove us to dial things back a bit and open it up. It harkens back to the music we first were inspired by in the ’80s, like the thrash-metal scene. The sense that you are being vaulted into outer space by the performance of the band was really important to us, but those bands also were able to control things.”The downshift was especially difficult for Hannah. He never had a guitar teacher growing up, so he’s always figured things out for himself. That means that now, in his 50s, he’s still trying to correct “bad” techniques that he’s developed over the years. One of them is playing too fast. When Hannah comes up with a high-velocity riff now, he sets a metronome and tries to play it at half speed. The point is to determine if the phrasing is still intelligible; if it’s not, he’s not playing it right when it’s at full speed, either. “I was working on just being able to play simple, mechanical things at much slower speeds,” he says. “I realized when I did it for a long time, and I got okay at it, when I sped it up, it was so much better. In the course of doing that, sometimes you discover the slower speed is actually better. The stuff you’re trying to do gets more of a chance to be heard instead of just blowing by everybody.”Another key part of Hannah’s style has been to hide his playing behind high-gain signals; during the making of At Peace, he was determined to break that pattern. Inspired by lower-gain metal records like Nuclear Assault’s Game Over and Hallows Eve’s Monument, Hannah dialed in less distortion, aiming to play his parts with as little gain as possible on his EverTune bridge-equipped Gibson SG, running into a Friedman BE-100 head. The Friedman’s sheer power helped maintain a feeling of chaos, but so did a custom guitar built by Winnipeg’s Allan Beardsell, which didn’t have an EverTune bridge—Hannah’s request. “EverTune made an amazing invention, and nine times out of 10 that’s what I want to play, but you have to give up something for that, and you give up just a touch of chaos and variability,” says Hannah.Chris Hannah’s GearGuitars1997 Gibson SG with EverTune bridge, Bare Knuckle Pickups Nailbomb in the bridge, and Seymour Duncan JB in the neckAllen Beardsell-built custom electricAmpsMarshall JCM2000 DSL 50-watt head (live)Friedman BE-100 (2015 revision; studio)’90s Mesa/Boogie Rectifier angled 4×12 (de-tolexed) with two Celestion V30s on the bottom and two Celestion G12M Greenbacks on the topEffectsFractal VP4Strings & PicksJim Dunlop Flow Gloss 2 mm and 3 mm picksAny string brand (.010-.046 or .010-.052)Writing and recording these songs, says Hannah, “the best part of being in a band is being in the practice space. Everything outside the practice space door is almost universally bullshit. I don’t like touring, I don’t like playing live, I don’t like any of it. I like being in the practice space, because there’s where you are literally playing, you know, exploring.”The title At Peace, says Hannah, is paradoxical. “It’s earnest, but it’s also sardonic,” he explains. “There has to be some meaningful aspect to our time on earth. I keep bringing up this old adage: ‘Accept what you can’t change, and change what you can’t accept.’ But in this era, there are some things that we cannot accept that we also cannot seem to change at this point. The trajectory and the momentum behind the insanity is very daunting and frightening. So what do you do? Sure, I could read Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now and develop a mindset where I accept what is happening. But can I live with myself? I find life under this particular system of organization to be a constant state of humiliation. How do I find meaning within that? As somebody who has kids, how do I face my kids to not seem like I’ve just lived the life of a coward the whole time in the face of all this?”“This record, we thought, ‘We’re going to push ourselves in the opposite direction, out of our comfort zone.’ For us, that meant slowing down.”The title song itself is a series of explorations of darkness, and meditations of a sort on trying to resolve our world’s exhausting contradictions. The last line is lifted from the Canadian songwriter Bruce Cockburn’s “Lovers in a Dangerous Time”: “Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight/Got to kick at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight.” Here, Hannah belts the final word over the furious clang of the main guitar riff.The track and the record arrive at a time when it feels as though a new threshold for global-scale madness and cruelty is reached each week, and Propagandhi’s music still functions as a flaying of this international order. (“This is the one place where I can tell the world what I really think of it,” says Hannah.) But there’s a resignation to At Peace, too—a feeling of acceptance that we’re on a sinking ship. Hannah’s just not sure where we go from here. “You can see I don’t really have an answer, but that’s kind of the point of the song, and maybe even the title of the record,” says Hannah. “I don’t know what the answer is in this insane world anymore.”YouTubeThe brutal, moving animated video for At Peace’s title track illustrates the mindset of the always-political Propagandhi in 2025.

Adding to the company’s broad ranging product line, DiMarzio has introduced three new models this summer: a pair of brand new pickups for beefing up your Tele-style guitar, and a new configuration of the legendary Super Distortion humbucker.The DP436 Muscle T Neck retains all the dynamic response of a good early sixties Tele® pickup but adds more of the glassy sparkle that guitarists crave. The Muscle T™ Neck has been carefully calibrated with extra volume and presence to keep up with the needs of today’s players, and the overall musical character delivers a better string-to-string balance for rhythms that cut and precise soloing.Both models are drop-in replacements for standard Telecaster pickups and offer traditional 2-conductor wiring. The DP437 Muscle T™ Bridge and DP436 Muscle T™ Neck pickups capture the best attributes of classic 1960s vintage Telecaster pickups with a dash of added output.The DP437 Muscle T Bridge utilizes a traditional magnet stagger inspired by early ‘60s Tele® pickups, but DiMarzio has kicked the output up a notch to get more sustain and added warmth to the top end to eliminate the harshness. The balanced lows, mid-range snarl and clear top end make the Muscle T™ perfect for any player that wants legendary single coil Tele® tone with a modern touch. DiMarzio’s DP500CR Super PAF® Ceramic is a new version of the legendary pickup that put high-output ceramic humbuckers on the map, now available with a vintage PAF® look.The original Super Distortion® started a sound revolution. Replacement pickups simply didn’t exist before the invention of the Super Distortion® in the early Seventies. The Super Distortion® (and its original 3-conductor version, the Dual Sound®) was the first pickup specifically designed to kick a tube amp into total overdrive, brandishing a perfect blend of power and tone: both single-notes and chords jump out of the amp and fill the room (or the track) with a wall of sound. DiMarzio’s DP500CR Super PAF® Ceramic delivers the classic sound you’ve heard for five decades on platinum records from players as varied as Ace Frehley, Al Di Meola, Phil Collen, Tom Scholz, and Paul Gilbert. It’s also versatile: 4-conductor wiring allows instant access to Strat®-like split and series-parallel modes.Street pricing for the DP437 Muscle T™ Bridge and DP436 Muscle T™ Neck is $89 each. The DP500CR Super PAF® Ceramic carries a $99 street price. Each pickup is individually hand-wound and tested in DiMarzio’s New York City factory. For more information visit dimarzio.com.

Synth-bass pedals have been around for a long time. They’ve come in a wide variety of flavors and achieved various degrees of success as far as tones and designs go. But, in my experience, they are a class of pedals that are tough to get right. Tracking and latency are always challenges. And they don’t always do a great job of approximating vintage synth-bass patches from classic recordings—specializing in sounds better suited for a sci-fi movie or avant/experimental projects than a Stevie Wonder or Michael Jackson context. MXR’s new Bass Synth, however, delivers where so many other bass synths fall short.Source MaterialIn developing the Bass Synth, MXR called on Ian Martin Allison for an artist’s perspective. Allison is a Minneapolis-based bass player with a prominent session resume, a regular on the very popular Scott’s Bass Lessons, and maintains a steady gig with singer-songwriter Eric Hutchinson. He also maintains his own strong online following by creating and sharing synth-bass-style tones made with traditional pedal combinations and his programmable multi-effects unit. Allison’s faithful reproductions of classic synth sounds created with electric bass made him the ideal sounding board for the MXR team.Can’t Judge a Book by Looking at the CoverAt a glance, the MXR Bass Synth looks pretty conventional. There are just six rotary controls and a few buttons. But looks, in this case, are deceiving. The MXR is feature-packed, and I couldn’t possibly cover all of them here. But the in-depth, 30-minute video instruction manual Jim Dunlop put up on YouTube hints at the expansiveness of its potential.For the convenience-minded player—or synth beginner—the heart, soul, and saving grace of this pedal might be the presets. Many bass players have limited experience with the process of real creative synthesis via waveforms and filters, and MXR’s factory presets help fast-track the leap to bass-synth sound design. There are many useful departure points and they make the pedal instantly usable. Allison had a hand in developing the presets, and most are easy to incorporate into your playing style. They include sounds inspired by Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” Stevie Wonder’s TONTO synth, the Minimoog sound on Funkadelic’s “Flashlight,” as well as modern patches inspired by specific songs and artists as diverse as Björk, Nine Inch Nails, and Deadmau5—and that’s a short list of what’s here. There are user-programmable presets, too, of course, and expression-pedal compatibility enables filter sweeping and other effects. Like an Old, Funky FriendThe first thing I did when I plugged the Bass Synth in was engage the preset for “Thriller.” I tweaked the sub-mix control ever so slightly to add a little more bottom to the sound and was knocked out by the accuracy of the tracking. Even when I added lots of vibrato and dramatic slides—moves that would confound a lesser bass synth—the sound was punchy and clear, and with a tweak of the mix control I could let just a tiny amount of the original tone of my bass in to lend extra clarity. Best of all, though, I did not have to alter my playing to make these sounds work. The Bass Synth is both familiar and forgiving.To get a handle on the breadth of the possible synth textures, check out the sound clip for the edgy “Flashlight” Minimoog-style patch (clip 2). This patch is an assault on the senses—intense, aggressive and conducive to overflowing sustain. This patch takes up space in the best way and makes me play much more economically, which is always a wonderful feeling. I was most excited about the “moneymaker” patch, though, which takes a cue from the Herbie Hancock classic, “Chameleon.” With its quick filter sweep and short, funky attack, it lends itself beautifully to staccato-style playing, and mixed in with a bit of my bass’ original sound, it’s a great alternative to an envelope filter.The VerdictGamechanger. It’s an overused word, but MXR earns the title here. This unit gets us closer than ever to not needing to bring a keyboard to the gig. It is usable right out of the box yet contains endless opportunities for deep dives and creativity way beyond what the relative simplicity of the pedal suggests. Whether you have no experience with synth bass or you are a daily key bass player, you should get this pedal. The Bass Synth might not be for every bassist, but if you’re expected to cover a lot of tonal ground or are just a restless bass explorer, it is potentially a staple with a strong chance of staying on your board forever.