Today, we've teamed up with legendary guitarist Chris Impellitteri and his eponymous band to premiere the music video for their rip-roaring track, "Phantom Of The Opera." You can check it out above.
"Phantom Of The Opera" is one of the highlights of The Nature of the Beast, the band's recently released 11th album. Featuring plenty of six-string pyrotechnics and air-tight interplay between Impellitteri and his band, the album shows that the guitarist can still bring it, three decades into his career.
"'The Phantom of the Opera' is a song I have wanted to remake since I was a kid," Impellitteri told Guitar World. "Yes I realize that other bands like Nightwish have also covered it, as well as Iron Maiden having a song with the same title, and I respect both artists immensely, but our version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s masterpiece is very much Impellitteri."
"When we created our musical arrangement for this song our collective band vision was to basically take the Phantom on a wild musical ride through Hell! We wanted to turn the song into a speed/power metal type song. I will say our version can seem fairly challenging to play as a guitarist due to the various complex scale sequences, modes and speed at which we are playing. At the same time the lead vocals are quite brutal on our singer, Rob Rock, as he had to sing both the male tenor part as well as the female vocal part, which resides in the alto and soprano ranges.
"I am very pleased with the outcome of this song, especially my solos and tone. I used my Charvel custom shop Stratocaster and various vintage modified Marshall amps, pedals, and speaker cabs, while bassist James Pulli got a great growly bass tone with his Spector bass and vintage Ampeg SVT rigs."
For more on Impellitteri and The Nature of the Beast, check out our story on the album from the Holiday 2018 issue of Guitar World.
