Motörhead: In the StudioBy Jake Brown with Lemmy Kilmister
“I’ve just always been in a hurry for everything… I’m a very impatient man,” quips Lemmy Kilmister. That summarizes Motörhead’s attitude in the studio, which has helped form their distinctive sound and far-reaching influence. Thirty years ago, Motörhead’s fusion of punk and rock changed the world on a scale they couldn’t have dreamed of. Some would argue that without Motörhead bands such as Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer wouldn’t exist. For evidence, they point to a slew of unrelenting Motörhead albums that started in the late ’70s and has carried their seminal sound over three decades and through countless trends.
The new book Motörhead: In the Studio chronicles the band’s 26 albums, from their self-titled released in 1977 to 2008’s Motörizer. Sure, the band took liberties and risks with their sound here and there—the closing shanty tune “1916” from the album 1916, to name one— but author Jake Brown shows (with plenty of Lemmy anecdotes) just how grounded the band has been—and seemingly always will be—in their core sound. In the Studio is peppered with great moments and stories, but what’s really fascinating is the band’s self-reflection. “Well, I make rock ‘n’ roll records; I don’t make heavy records,” said Lemmy to Inferno’s producer Cameron Webb. While Motörhead claims they’re not heavy, their catalog, from Ace of Spades to Orgasmatron, is clearly more than just straight-up rock. They drink, breathe and sweat a rock ‘n’ roll attitude, but it’s a no-holds-barred attitude on steroids. It’s palpable in their performances, interviews and most importantly documented on all of their records. And In the Studio does a great job of capturing the machismo and swagger that is Lemmy and Motörhead and putting it into words. —JW
List $24.95
johnblakepublishing.co.uk
Video
Meshuggah – AliveSince 1987, Sweden’s Meshuggah has constantly pushed the boundaries of how metal sounds and is constructed. Their penchant for odd time signatures and extreme downtuning defines their signature chugging sound, but Meshuggah’s pinnacle is their live performances. Their jams are revered as some of the tightest musicianship in metal, if not all of rock. And the Alive DVD vividly snatches their music’s intensity and the intricacies of their performance and puts them in your lap for at-home consumption.
Seeing and hearing how incredibly tight this band is is not only a treat for the casual listener, but for the musician as well. In an era when lower tuning and intense riffing may be starting to lose its luster, Meshuggah shows just how powerful it can still be when played with precision and attitude. The performances here are more than entertaining—they’re lessons for practicing a craft and locking in with a band.
Intertwined with the performances commentary from the band about tour life and spending months at a time away from loved ones. There are certainly some straightforward moments, like the brutally heavy renditions of songs such as “Bleed,” “New Millennium Cyanide Christ,” and “Lethargica.” Also included in the package is a CD featuring 12 tracks performed on the DVD. The audio quality of both discs is top notch. The tones are clear and audible from all of the instruments, however, there are times when the guitars could be a bit louder. Concert DVDs have become the norm—especially for metal bands—but it’s not every day you find a band that can stand atop a heap of downtuned mush with a powerful performance like Meshuggah’s Alive. —JW
List $19.98
nuclearblastusa.com
Electric Purgatory: The Fate of the Black RockerWithout black guitarists and musicians, we wouldn’t have rock ‘n’ roll. From Robert Johnson and Leadbelly to Jimi Hendrix and Prince, black musicians have been some of the most innovative and influential artists of the last century. But in the past 20 years, the black rocker’s scarcity has been increasingly apparent to musicians and fans alike—where have they gone?
Directed by Raymond Cayle, Electric Purgatory poses a racially charged question and presents a very thoughtful response. By first providing a thorough history of black musicians’ roles in rock music, Cayle provides the context to appropriately examine this polarizing issue. Instead of inserting his own voice into the documentary, Cayle allows a roster full of black rock’s leaders—Vernon Reid, H.R. of Bad Brains, members of Fishbone, and Doug Pinnick of King’s X—and music journalists to express their opinions and ideas on the matter. They do so with such forthrightness and honesty that at times it’s disheartening, but ultimately their tone and message provide answers rather than excuses for the racial lopsidedness in rock music. The participants rarely resort to finger-pointing and references to “the man,” but address this situation as a matter of concern to all. Furthermore, the last portion of the film examines ways to promote black musicians in rock, destroy the stigma of being a black rocker, and bring black audiences back to rock concerts.
Electric Purgatory isn’t a lighthearted, ho-hum documentary—it’s a significant film that spotlights the black rock community’s introspective look at their history, importance and current lack of representation in the genre. —CK
List $19.99
microcinema.com
Guitarists are used to coveting cranky, old gear, but if you’re not a rack user, the H3000 might not be for you! If you ever see one of these in a studio, be sure to take some time to check it out, and maybe give the plugin a try.When it debuted in 1987, the H3000 was marketed as an “intelligent pitch-changer” that could generate stereo harmonies in a user-specified key. This was heady stuff in the ’80s! But while diatonic harmonizing grabbed the headlines, subtler uses of this pitch-shifter cemented its legacy. Patch 231 MICROPITCHSHIFT, for example, is a big reason the H3000 persists in racks everywhere. It’s essentially a pair of very short, single-repeat delays: The left side is pitched slightly up while the right side is pitched slightly down (default is ±9 cents). The resulting tripling/thickening effect has long been a mix-engineer staple for pop vocals, and it’s also my first call when I want a stereo chorus for guitar.
The second-gen H3000S, introduced the following year, cemented the device’s guitar bona fides. Early-adopter Steve Vai was such a proponent of the first edition that Eventide asked him to contribute 48 signature sounds for the new model (patches 700-747). Still-later revisions like the H3000B and H3000D/SE added even more functionality, but these days it’s not too important which model you have. Comprehensive EPROM chips containing every patch from all generations of H3000 (plus the later H3500) are readily available for a modest cost, and are a fairly straightforward install.
In addition to pitch-shifting, there are excellent modulation effects and reverbs (like patch 211 CANYON), plus presets inspired by other classic Eventide boxes, like the patch 513 INSTANT PHASER. A comprehensive accounting of the H3000’s capabilities would be tedious, but suffice to say that even the stock presets get deliciously far afield. There are pitch-shifting reverbs that sound like fever-dream ancestors of Strymon’s “shimmer” effect. There are backwards-guitar simulators, multiple extraterrestrial voices, peculiar foreshadows of the EarthQuaker Devices Arpanoid and Rainbow Machine (check out patch 208 BIZARRMONIZER), and even button-triggered Foley effects that require no input signal (including a siren, helicopter, tank, submarine, ocean waves, thunder, and wind). If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute. (Spin the big wheel and find out what you’ve won!)
“If you’re ever without your deck of Oblique Strategies cards, the H3000’s singular knob makes a pretty good substitute.”
But there’s another, more pedestrian reason I tend to reach for the H3000 and its rackmount relatives in the studio: I like to do certain types of processing after the mic. It’s easy to overlook, but guitar speakers are signal processors in their own right. They roll off high and low end, they distort when pushed, and the cabinets in which they’re mounted introduce resonances. While this type of de facto processing often flatters the guitar itself, it isn’t always advantageous for effects.
Effects loops allow time-based effects to be placed after preamp distortion, but I like to go one further. By miking the amp first and then sending signal to effects in parallel, I can get full bandwidth from the airy reverbs and radical pitched-up effects the H3000 can offer—and I can get it in stereo, printed to its own track, allowing the wet/dry balance to be revisited later, if needed. If a sound needs to be reproduced live, that’s a problem for later. (Something evocative enough can usually be extracted from a pedal-form descendant like the Eventide H90.)
Like most vintage gear, the H3000 has some endearing quirks. Even as it knowingly preserves glitches from earlier Eventide harmonizers (patch 217 DUAL H910s), it betrays its age with a few idiosyncrasies of its own. Extreme pitch-shifting exhibits a lot of aliasing (think: bit-crusher sounds), and the analog Murata filter modules impart a hint of warmth that many plug-in versions don’t quite capture. (They also have a habit of leaking black goo all over the motherboard!) It’s all part of the charm of the unit, beloved by its adherents. (Well, maybe not the leaking goo!)
In 2025, many guitarists won’t be eager to care for what is essentially an expensive, cranky, decades-old computer. Even the excitement of occasional tantalum capacitor explosions is unlikely to win them over! Fortunately, some great software emulations exist—Eventide’s own plugin even models the behavior of the Murata filters. But hardware offers the full hands-on experience, so next time you spot an old H3000 in a rack somewhere—and you’ve got the time—fire it up, wait for the distinctive “click” of its relays, spin the knob, and start digging.
