The evolution of metal guitar has seen players turn up and tune down to give their riffs more weight, but it doesn’t always work on record, and the Austrian guitarist and composer Bernd Brodträger, aka Bernth, explains why in a new song titled Still Shreds.
This, he stresses, is satire. Let’s not take things too seriously. But does he get at a deeper truth here – that, yes, tuning down ad infinitum is an aesthetic choice that does not come free. There are downsides. Still Shreds is a cautionary tale of what happens when you take an extended range guitar and take it all the way down.
