Rigged: Northlane

There’s a moment, about 6 and a half minutes into this Northlane Rigged video, when guitarist Josh Smith points to the Orange cabinets and says “I’ll explain what we use these for, and why.” Now in the case of most bands, this would be a “duh, they’re for making your guitar sound loud you jerk” moment. But Northlane aren’t most bands.

These guys have one of the most complicated setups I’ve ever seen. It combines a near-Darsombra level of labyrinthine pedal routing with a direct in-ear mix matrix reminiscent of Periphery. Usually part of the impetus behind going the amp-modeling route is to leave behind the bulk of gear and odds of a single band cable killing your signal, but Northlane have no one but two boards per guitarist/bassist, and full stacks, and a separate refrigerator rack that accepts the 8-channel (!) cable snakes from each board and routes them to the in-ears and front of house. I especially like how those snakes provide the boards with power.

I’m not going to make the effort of explaining everything going on in this routing when the video does a much more effective job, so give it a look and thank the gods that you don’t have the unenviable job of teching for these guys.

Northlane are about to embark on a tour with August Burns Red. You can take a look at the dates at this location. And if you can’t wait for a live performance to hear these rigs in action, I’ve embedded the video for Northlane’s new single, “Rot,” below.