News : BTBG spill their guitar recording techniques

Atmospheric Sydney-based grinders Beyond Terror Beyond Grace aren’t far from releasing their upcoming, bound-to-be-amazing, full length album Nadir. And for those guitar players out there, the band have spilled the details on their guitar recording and playing techniques, which you can read below. If you’d prefer to read it at it’s original location, head over to their official website. For those who missed the sampler, it’s even further below for your convenience.

“The rhythm tracks on Nadir were primarily run through my Framus Dragon head and an old Marshall 1960A. Most of the rhythm tracks were recorded without extra effects as I wanted to achieve a pretty natural, organic and unsaturated tone in keeping with the feeling of the rest of the album sonically and lyrically. The Framus Dragon head is an absolute wonder to work with both live and during recording. It has enough gain to blow most other heads out of the water and still retain that really nice warm vintage tone at the same time. Having moved to this amp after using an ENGL Powerball (Also an amazing amp, but not quite versatile enough for my needs) I am extremely happy with the result achieved on the album.

I tracked the album using 2 different guitars, to give a feeling of depth and difference in tone throughout. The main guitar I used was an older model of the LTD Viper 400 which is a gem to play and always sounds huge. A lot of the album incorporates heavy tremolo picking and as such I opted to also track with a Schecter Elite 007 7 string which had a very different tone to that of the Viper, a much bassier tone to fill out the bottom end. I utilised 2.0mm Tortex picks for most parts on the album and Ernie Ball 11-52s and 11-58s (7 String).

The lead sections in the album (When I say lead, I mean the higher octave parts that float above the main sections, as there are no “solos”, strictly speaking) were boosted with 2 different pedals. I first ran the signal through the Electro Harmonix Cathedral reverb, and then the Belcat analog delay (a big thanks to Rob Allen for the lending of both of these). The Cathedral Reverb is a seriously awesome pedal with a huge amount of different settings for all sorts of reverb and delay effects. The main effect I used with this pedal was some slight delay and the ‘Hall’ setting which gave it a really nice resonating effect, as if it was being played in a church or some similar venue. In some parts we also dabbled with the ‘reverse’ effect on the pedal for some added ambient/noise sections. The Belcat analog delay pedal is another great pedal and was used for the more staccato delay effect in the higher tremolo sections.

There are some sludgier sections of the album that called for a more broken up and crunchier tone. For this tone I was lucky enough to be able to record with an ancient looking Trace Elliot ‘Super Tramp’, again courtesy of Mr Rob Allen. Not much to look at, but this amp is probably one of the dirtiest and disgusting (In a good way!) amps I’ve had the pleasure of playing through. When ringing out on big open chords, it literally sounded like it was in the process of melting down or exploding. This is exactly what I was after and for the slower, doomier riffs really added to the overall feeling of desperation we wanted to achieve throughout the project.

All in all recording Nadir was a great experience. Big thanks to Joel Taylor and the aforementioned Rob Allen for all the expertise.

Guitars:

LTD Viper 401
Schecter Elite 007

Amps:

High Gain: Framus Dragon
Dirty/sludge/Low End: Trace Elliot Super Tramp

Cabinet:

Marshall 1960A

Effects pedals:

Belcat Analog Delay
Electro Harmonix Cathedral Reverb“