Tosin Abasi delivers a technical masterclass in fiery playthrough of Animals As Leaders’ Monomyth

Earlier this year, celebrated prog-metal outfit Animals As Leaders released their first new track in five years, Monomyth, and now electric guitar titan Tosin Abasi has released an awe-inspiring playthrough of the chug-heavy track.

Using his Abasi Concepts Master Series Larada 8-string, Abasi once again delivers a reminder of why he is currently considered one of guitar’s leading instrumentalists. 

The off-kilter intro chugs, which alone would be enough to make the faint of heart trip over their strings, are immaculately delivered, while the preliminary string-skipping solo passages are executed with surgical precision.

His tone, which comes courtesy of the revamped Neural DSP: Abasi 2.0.0 plugin, is as gritty as ever, though at the same time is packed full of clarity for those intricate lead lines, which crop up throughout the hypnotic rendition.

Technique-wise, it’s a triumph. With a guitar pick in hand, Abasi is able to summon up a series of elite hybrid picking lines – with the aid of his third finger – and fretboard-spanning solo passages littered with blitzing scale runs.

Speaking on social media, Abasi commented, “Interesting note about this song is that it was composed primarily on the drums first by Matt [Garstka] with the guitar added afterwards. Writing this way can be a fun challenge and the musical result can [be] fresh!”

When it dropped, Monomyth was the band’s first new offering since 2016’s The Madness Of Many, and the first single to be released since the band announced a new deal with their current label, the independent Sumerian Records.

“Monomyth is part fever dream, part ritual. Its imagery represents man's ceaseless attempts to translate transcendent ideas into movement,” Abasi said of the track at the time. “The conflation of struggle with meaning,” he continued. “Pain with significance. The ultimate failure of distilling perceived patterns in the world into knowledge."

All the tones heard in the Monomyth playthrough can be accessed as presets in Neural DSP: Abasi 2.0.0.