Lamb of God’s Mark Morton and Guild!
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Morton with his new D55 model.
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Guild acoustic guitars aren’t normally associated with the darker, heavier realms of the metal world—with any of metal’s many realms, really—so you can just imagine our delight when we heard that Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton recently acquired a Guild D55 dreadnought model and is absolutely thrilled with its sound and feel.
Let us note here that Grammy-nominated Virginia-based quintet Lamb of God is huge—as in at the very forefront of new U.S. metal, with a slew of top-selling albums including New American Gospel (2000), As the Palaces Burn (2003), Ashes of the Wake (2004) and Sacrament (2006). Morton himself exemplifies the new breed of metal guitarists, with an aggressive style, light-speed technique, searing intensity and distinctive chording that has pretty much re-written the shred manual.
Metallurgy aside, however, the man does wield an acoustic guitar from time to time, and Morton graciously spoke with Guild News from his home in Virginia in late September as he was loading up the car to head for the studio where Lamb of God is already well under way recording its next album …
GN: Many people don’t associate acoustic guitar with music as heavy as yours. How do you weave acoustic guitar into Lamb of God’s music?
MM: Well, so far, I use acoustics and a variety of different instruments to write with. Even though we are absolutely more oriented toward, you know, flamethrower thrash and metal riffs—whatever you want to call it—there are parts that are kind of orchestrated and arranged from a guitar perspective. There are melodic parts, and a lot of that stuff I’ll wind up writing on an acoustic—just kind of sitting around the house.
Sometimes you can pick up a different instrument, and it’ll inspire you to do different things, musically. Because if I just stayed on a Randy Rhoads V all the time, I may not be as likely to write something that’s inspired by more melodic kinds of stuff. The acoustic is really good for that.
Now like I said, that’s thus far. To this point, in using particularly my Guild to write some stuff on this new album, I think some of the parts may actually come together that do include the acoustic, as opposed to taking a melodic part that was written on acoustic and transposing it to electric. I think we might actually wind up using some natural acoustic sounds for some of this stuff. Because really, if you follow that line of logic, if it’s written that way, that’s how it’s intended to sound. To incorporate that into music as extreme as we play—it’s gonna give it a really cool texture.
GN: So there might be some acoustic guitar on the next album in addition to just using one to write parts?
MM: Yeah, we’ll see—that’s certainly the plan for some of this stuff. There are a couple little intros and melodic pieces within the work on the new album that really lend themselves to that sound. I can’t guarantee it yet, but I think that’s going to be the plan for some of the tracks.
GN: What other tunings do you use with the acoustic guitar?
MM: Well, to a degree pretty much everything we play is in drop D, so I guess that’s an alternate tuning, although to us it’s become standard. I actually play about half our songs in what I call “double drop D,” which is, I’ll take not only the heavy string on top, but also the high string on the bottom and I’ll tune that down to D too. So there are actually three Ds on my guitar—typically, my tuning is DADGBD.
GN: 3-D.
MM: Yeah, exactly. And it kind of just started as a way for me to cheat and get more dissonant high-end stuff. Some of the stuff I was going for was just gonna be easier if I dropped that high string down a step, and I just kind of got used to playing that way. There are other songs where I’ll bring that back up to E—if there’s a guitar solo where I’m using the high string, typically I’m up to E there and playing in a more standard tuning. But if I’m doing kind of atonal, dissonant stuff, a lot of times I’ll tune it down to D. You’d think I’d just get a Hipshot® or something on there (chuckles), but I just do it manual.
GN: How did you choose the Guild D55 model, and what is it about that grabs you?
MM: It was recommended to me. I needed a good steel-string, and I had a couple junky ones lying around the house. I talked to Brian (Jackson® guitars marketing manager Brian McDonald) and I said, “Look man, I need a real good steel string—just a good, solid, beautiful-sounding acoustic guitar. He said, “You need a Guild,” and I was like “All right, cool.”
I checked it out and I read the specs on it, and it sounded awesome. They sent it to me, and it was just the perfect call, man. As soon as I got it in my hands on it, it was really natural and easy. It’s just absolutely gorgeous. I love it. A really great-sounding instrument.
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