Sick Riffs #42: British five-piece Massive Wagons are known for their uplifting blend of classic and punk rock, and a band that needs to be on your radar. In the wake of 2019 album Fire It Up comes In It Together, taken from upcoming album House of Noise, due to be released later this year.
Guitarist Adam Thistlethwaite joins us from his home for today's episode of Sick Riffs to show you how to play the track's opening riff. He wields an LP copy electric guitar played through a Blackstar HT1R amp.
"For a band like us who built our foundation on playing live and getting physically into people’s faces as much as possible it’s been hard to accept that we aren’t allowed to do that anymore," says remarks Thistlethwaite. "Or at least for a significant length of time.
I believe people still want new music, and in some ways the demand is there more than ever, people crave distraction
"We had our first headline tour of Europe pulled from us this month, which was almost a year in the planning and a big portion of our income stream is in the live environment. We are currently promoting our new album due for release in July and had several very unique promotional plans become unviable all of a sudden, so are having to think very creatively on how we can market and publicize our new songs effectively.
"This will be the longest period of time we haven’t written a song or rehearsed together since the band formed 10 years ago, so there’s a big indication of how this impacts a band like ours. Established and new bands have been effected equally, it’s a level playing field and it’s been interesting to see how different areas of the industry have reacted to recent events.
"Bands new and old are being forced to embrace online interaction, streaming live solo gigs and Q&A type sessions. The show goes on one way or another - you can’t stop the rock!"
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Sick Riffs is a Guitar World video series designed to help guitarists affected by the coronavirus. Self-isolating players around the world have each filmed a lesson where they teach you one of their own guitar riffs, up close and personal. If you dig the lesson, we encourage you to buy music and merch from the artist or stream their music.
Sam was Staff Writer at GuitarWorld.com from 2019 to 2023, and also created content for Total Guitar, Guitarist and Guitar Player. He has well over 15 years of guitar playing under his belt, as well as a degree in Music Technology (Mixing and Mastering). He's a metalhead through and through, but has a thorough appreciation for all genres of music. In his spare time, Sam creates point-of-view guitar lesson videos on YouTube under the name Sightline Guitar.
