John Longstreth of Origin and recently Gorguts fame has taken to Indiegogo to fund the creation and release of an instructional DVD. I’m assuming that, if you have never listened to Origin, you at least are familiar with Longstreth from Gorguts’ latest record Coloured Sands, because you have excellent taste and there’s no way you’d miss out on the best albums of the year, right? Good.
Anyway, Longstreth is a beast on the kit—a guy whose creativity and nuanced technique always shine through no matter the speed of his performance. He’s not the first virtuoso from the death metal scene to put out a video like this (Sean Reinert and Gene Hoglan have similar releases, among others), but it’s still great to see instructional discs from players who have been out there touring with great bands. Obviously clinic and session-oriented phenoms like Marco Minneman, Thomas Lang, Virgil Donati, etc, are jaw-dropping and totally worth your time, but it’s nice to see products like this from drummers who have really been in the trenches.
The Indiegogo campaign has most of the usual reward tiers like posters, shirts, John’s old (maybe broken?) cymbals, and lessons. You can also take a martial arts lesson from the man. One reward tier strikes me as a bad idea though: for $2000 John will not only give you a private lesson, but also jam with your band. Don’t do this, people. “Hey, instead of me on the throne, why don’t you dudes get a taste of what it would sound like if your rhythm section was the best in the world? It won’t be the slightest letdown when you have to downgrade back to your usual drummer…”
As an aside, do yourself a favor and check out one of Longstreth’s lesser-known projects, Dim Mak. The band formed from the ashes of early NJ tech death pioneers Ripping Corpse.
