With the imminent arrival of Whitechapel’s new record, Our Endless War (it hit stores today in fact), the band’s been posting quite a bit of info about their processes. We’ve already covered a bit of it when I took note of the band’s cost-effective “bring your producer home with you to record the guitars and vocals” approach two weeks ago.
Now the band’s guitarists Alex Wade, Ben Savage and Zach Householder sat down with the DiMarzio Pickups folks to talk about riff composition. Seems the band split off into groups or solo to work on parts simultaneously. If anything it’s an interesting watch purely to see who wrote which riffs.
I’ve got to say though that for a video sponsored by a pickup company, the tones are a little lacking. Sounds like there’s way too much gain and processing going on there. Or am I just overly picky? What do you think?
Speaking of Whitechapel, have you checked out our contest where we give away an ESP/LTD guitar signed by the band, as well as one autographed by Devildriver, and VIP tickets to every stop on their tour with Carnifex, Revocation, and more? Well if not, do so ASAP. And by the way, you can stream Whitechapel’s Our Endless War at Metal Blade Records’ website.
Poophaus / April 29, 2014 5:31 pm
Man, this stuff sounds terrible, I can’t tell if it’s their playing or just the tone.
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Poophaus / April 29, 2014 5:32 pm
Correction: Ben sounds ok, but Alex is pretty borderline and Zach is just awful.
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Strapping Young Lutrine / April 29, 2014 5:32 pm
All those “riffs” were so boring and indistinguishable/stock. And the article is right, the tones are terrible. Why can’t a good band do this sort of songwriting-insight video? Damn.
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terran236 / April 29, 2014 5:44 pm
wow sounded like their hands are made of mud, whilst playing mud strings using mud pickups from mud hell.
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PunchKnock / April 29, 2014 6:43 pm
I think individually the tones sound shite except for ben, but they kinda work together as a whole tone, It sucks though because it seems like they dialed it in making sure the 3 guitars filled in a certain part for the whole but there’s way to much presence/gain, Alex is low/lowmids for the beef, Zach is more mid focused, super crunchy as well (they’re both using the d-activators to that’s no surprise) then bens is ambient/space lead w/ the liquifire/crunchweasel … I can see what they were going for it just seems poorly executed.
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Zeus / April 30, 2014 4:41 pm
They sound pretty good on record, never seen em live, but this is horrible. Also they have at least one to many guitarists. Just too much going on there.
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PunchKnock / May 1, 2014 11:22 am
I’d say most bands are doing it wrong. Don’t ever play the ambient/leads if you’re going to cut the rhythm playing in half stage wise to play them. It just never sounds right. Like when acacia only had DL and Jack would play the rhythm so DL could play the ambient stuff.. sounds like shit live though.. bands should always be playing their rhythm in stereo or have 1 player put cabs on both sides of the stage.Just using 2 guitar players w/ full stacks sounds better.. They also usually have 3 guitar parts going. Leads, octave/ambient parts and rhythm. Point is for me. Don’t include layers in your songs if your not going to replicate them live. Includes octaves under over the rhythm along w/ leads etc-
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Chapstick / April 29, 2014 11:04 pm
It’s a film studio, they are probably playing through small combo amps for this video
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hester kukk / April 29, 2014 11:28 pm
Like whitechapel can write songs lol that’s funny.
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Cock of Steele / April 30, 2014 2:24 am
Sounded like shit or sounded like Whitechapel?
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Marc Douglas / April 30, 2014 7:25 am
Fuck. That was painful to watch. Those are considered riffs now?
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Omnium / May 1, 2014 3:37 pm
Three guitarists to make something that generic and bland? Meh
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ProgDog / May 2, 2014 11:23 am
What an endless shitstorm.
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