“I don’t play flamenco at all – I just fake it on an acoustic with a guitar pick. But I’ve always loved that tonality”: Jake Dreyer might not be referencing Paco de Lucía on Witherfall’s new album – but he is thinking what Brian May might do

Jake Dreyer can see the mauve aura enveloping Sounds of the Forgotten, the newest album from his melodic metal project, Witherfall. What’s more, each record occupies a different emotional and tonal spectrum of the rainbow.

“We think in colors when it comes down to the music, which is kind of strange. But to us, this sounds like a purple record,” Dreyer says of his group’s collective, feels-based synesthesia. “When I was in music school, people were able to associate intervals with colors, which is fucking wild. I’m not there yet. I just get the vibes of the song.”

Dreyer’s work within this latest palette can be quite regal. His royal violet solo sections on They Will Let You Down and Insidious are fit with micro-sized, mega-layered and joyfully jarring harmonies befitting the best kinds of Queen songs (“I always think about what Brian May would do.”)

There’s more than one shade to his playing, though, with Witherfall’s fourth full-length also exploring galloped thrash, grandiose power balladry and Beethoven-quoting neo-classicism.

Bassist Anthony Crawford – a veteran player who’d previously backed Justin Timberlake and Allan Holdsworth – pumps through a mix of R&B-and-metal informed rhythms, while Dreyer also infused several pieces with a newfound, faux-Spanish acoustic flutteriness.

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“I don’t play flamenco at all; I just fake it on an acoustic with a guitar pick. But I’ve always loved that tonality,” he says of the “hollowed-out” opulence he yielded with a Taylor nylon-string guitar and a trad-modded plectrum style. “I’m not doing it at all like Paco de Lucía, with fingers. I wish I could…”

While Dreyer notes that, lyrically, Forgotten often taps into personal “despair” and “the hardships of having a band in this day and age,” he admits being in a metal group is still super-fun. He recalls the band taking over sleepy Utica, New York, each night after sessions wrapped at the Big Blue North studio.

There’s also Witherfall’s cute-as-heck cross-promotion with iconic toymakers Funko, who made bubble-eyed figures of vocalist Joseph Michael and Dreyer, the latter’s plastic avatar accessorized with a miniaturized version of his number one Jackson KV7. “It’s the one I’ve been playing for years; I had the custom shop make it in 2010,” he says.

As you might have guessed, both versions of the instrument are coated in vibrant purple paint. “It comes from my love for ’80s hair metal and those bombastic-looking guitars,” he says with a laugh. “Hideously beautiful. Disgusting, even.”

• Sounds of the Forgotten is out now via Deathwave.