Latest articles by Jon Wiederhorn
Meshuggah’s Mårten Hagström: “Fredrik is the mad guitar genius. So for him to come back was natural and made me want to go on with it, too”
Hagström takes you inside the Swedish extreme metal masters’ punishing new album, Immutable, and the triumphant return of co-founding guitarist Fredrik Thordendal
Dave Mustaine breaks down every track on Megadeth's The Sick, The Dying… and the Dead!
From the fastest song Megadeth have ever recorded, to calling in Ice-T for tactical support, Megadave goes track by track and unpacks the story behind the band's 16th studio album
Megadeth's Dave Mustaine and Kiko Loureiro go deep on the tragedy and triumph that fueled The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead!
In this exclusive interview, the state-of-the-art metal guitar duo unpack a story of sickness and recovery, and reveal how their opposing styles yielded some of the heaviest riffs and solos of the thrash titans' career
Judas Priest Legend Glenn Tipton Speaks Candidly About His Struggle with Parkinson's Disease
Warren DeMartini, Steve Stevens, Lita Ford and an all-star panel share their guitar highlights of the ‘80s
Some of the biggest names in guitar look back on the era of big solos and even bigger hair to share their favorite riffs, shredders and, yes, haircuts of the decade
Richie Faulkner: “Getting the guitar back in my hands was what I needed to do to get back on track – to give me the strength to keep going”
On September 26, 2021, while onstage with Judas Priest, Faulkner came incredibly close to dying. Miraculously, he’s here to tell the tale – and what a tale it is...
Gary Holt: “I had one job in Slayer and one job only. Go out, play killer, bang your head and play a little bit of a guitar hero role. I wear a lot more hats in Exodus”
Gary Holt on life after Slayer, making a triumphant return with Exodus on the ferocious Persona Non Grata, and why you'll reap the rewards if you record song ideas as you go
Phil Demmel: “I wanted to do five really good songs that were like rapid punches to the face and then get out ”
On their blazing new EP, Let the World Burn, Phil Demmel and co. capture the aggression of the thrash stalwarts’ early work
Halestorm: “Everybody was just on 11, pushing ourselves and playing these parts as if the world was never going to get back to any semblance of normalcy”
Lzzy Hale and Joe Hottinger on how dialing up the volume for the hard-rock therapeutical Back from the Dead roused them from pandemic inertia and restored their equilibrium
Volbeat’s Michael Poulsen and Rob Caggiano on chasing away pandemic anxiety with a Boss HM-2 and the rush of a new album
Servant of the Mind finds the Danish/American rock-metal stalwarts engage their mindset of the early days for an album of instinctive, heavy and therapeutic energy
Glenn Tipton looks back at 50 years of triumph and tragedy in Judas Priest
The guitar icon unpacks the legacy of a band that helped define heavy metal as we know it, opens up on the rift with K.K. Downing and reveals how punk gave them a kick up the backside
Zeal & Ardor’s Manuel Gagneux: “If I limited myself to Black music and black metal, I’d end up painting myself in a corner”
The Swiss-American iconoclast on why he had to expand his sound beyond black metal and draw in influences from across underground music and beyond
![[L-R] Bill Kelliher and Brent Hinds of Mastodon](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/KSVipMxw77RvrNWQWWgk4e-840-80.jpg.webp)
Mastodon: “We write our guitar parts separately then show them to each other. We’re not a jam band – we’re more like choreographed acrobatics”
Stylistically divergent – yet undoubtedly compatible – Mastodon guitarists Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher unravel Hushed and Grim, the band’s first double album
![[L-R] Taylor Momsen and Ben Phillips of The Pretty Reckless](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/rWvSjy3yMEmiLuwugX2Ti8-840-80.jpg.webp)
Taylor Momsen: “While grieving, I was depriving myself of what I loved most. When I picked up a guitar and started writing, the floodgates opened up”
The Pretty Reckless leader and guitarist Ben Phillips discuss how a series of tragedies left the band's future hanging in the balance, before they channeled their heartache to create their most powerful album to date, Death by Rock and Roll
K.K. Downing: “I don’t want to discard my heritage, my legacy, who I am, what I sound like and my style of writing”
The Metal God opens up about his Judas Priest exit and rebirth in KK's Priest, and explains why he is a Priest for life
Genghis Tron's Hamilton Gordon wants to put a spell on you with the experimental metallers' new album, Dream Weapon
A taste for the surreal sees the band dial down the freakouts for a hypnotic, krautrock-inspired sound
Tamar Aphek: "The first thing that captivated me about rock was all the kinds of distorted sounds you can get on a guitar"
How a former concert pianist was lured into rock – and guitardom – by the siren call of distortion
The wild times, final days and last recordings of Alexi Laiho
Featuring interviews with his Bodom After Midnight bandmates Daniel Freyberg and Mitja Toivonen, plus former Children of Bodom guitarist Roope Latvala
Tallah‘s Derrick Schneider: “I wanted every song to have two or three guitar parts to really make them pop”
Is this Pennsylvanian quartet nu-metal‘s greatest hope?
John Petrucci: ”The guitar melody takes the place of the vocals. If it was all soloing and noodling, it would get really boring”
The Dream Theater guitarist reflects on his first solo album since 2005 and tells us why it's a record of upbeat energy
John Petrucci details Terminal Velocity track by track: "These songs had to have a message. And the best way to do that is through melody"
The Dream Theater guitarist takes a closer look at his 2020 solo album, a veritable supernova of next-level guitar playing
