Deafheaven’s Kerry McCoy is a Young Gun

Young Guns is Rolling Stone’s new column and video series, co-presented by D’Addario, focusing on new guitarists across a variety of genres. Metal has been, a bit bizarrely, pretty damn well represented in the series. They’ve covered Dave DiSanto and Erik Nelson of Vektorm, as well as Tosin Abasi of Animals as Leaders, and have now added Deafheaven’s sunbathing tremolo-picker Kerry McCoy to their list. You can the full interview here.

Like everyone else who has thought about metal in the last year, McCoy’s music has been pretty difficult for me to avoid. But whether you think Deafheaven is a pack of little rat-man hipsters or not, you can’t deny that McCoy is an interesting dude with some unique views on metal guitar playing and songwriting.

We’ve also got a nice video interview between McCoy and Matt Sweeney, which serves as a nice primer into the various sonic aesthetics and styles that go into Deafheaven’s writing, as well as how they make My Bloody Valentine sounds work like Judas Priest. We also get a look at McCoy’s new Moonflower guitar, built by Sacha Dunable’s Dunable Guitars.