Playthrough: “Victorious” from Draemora!
Seattle’s Draemora will be unleashing their sophomore record “Death Rectangle” on 18th June and smashing a champagne bottle on the side of it when they hit the road for 10 shows with (hed)p.e. in July. Having premiered the first single “Victorious” last month, they want to share the progressive shred of that track with a guitar playthrough.
Guitarist Terry Jenkins comments on the writing and playing guitar for song: “In this playthrough of “Victorious”, and for the actual recording of the guitars, I used the same exact gear that I have been using for a while now. The guitar itself is only a few months old in this video, but everything else has been a constant for the last year, at least. The signal chain is: ESP E-II Horizon Baritone 7 > Line 6 Helix LT (using 4 cable method) > back out of the Helix LT’s FX Loop 1 > Gojira FX Sparkle Drive > ISP Decimator II > Digitec Whammy > Back into the Helix > Back out of the Helix FX Loop into my Rev G Mesa Triple Rec and then back into the Helix so I can use the Mesa’s preamp > Back into the Helix where it is split and I have a noise gate and EQ for what you hear out of the actual cabinet. Since that side uses the power section of the Mesa, too, and the other side has a separate gate and EQ to help match the sound the amp actually makes in a room to me, that runs into an Impulse Response that gets used for our in-ears live and can go to the front of house, as well. What you are hearing in this recording is the side with an Impulse Response. I wrote this song a few hours after purchasing this guitar. It was a little different than my other guitars and I ended up playing it for like 6 hours that night. In the course of that evening, I decided that what I was plucking around on sounded good, so I decided to record it and by the end of the night I had a full song written. I noticed right away the Fishman Moderns that were in it had such insane clarity and depth to them that I kept playing this big Major 7 chord that spanned most of the strings and I could hear all the details in there. It was kind of mesmerizing and that became the chorus. I also noticed that once I wanted to do some chugs and other techniques, the pickups allowed me a lot of freedom and that is sort of how the song came together. Pretty funny how a new sound or feel can really inspire you like that.”
The band adds: “We are really finding our sound on this album and where we all fit together and the two singles on here were so obvious to us because they sounded so good as demos. We could tell instantly that “Death Rectangle” was a single, it’s got a catchy riff, pounding drum parts and a chorus that we hope everyone will join in on when we can eventually play it live. Our planned second single “Victorious” is exactly the same way. We were going to actually separate it from the album and let it be a song on its own, but at the last minute, we decided it was the perfect way to end the album, because it has that great classic formula in there with a twist to the parts that really puts our stamp on it in a great way. Our main goal in mind for this release was that we wanted people to enjoy it live, so we made big choruses and really big recognizable parts that made us feel great when we were writing the whole record. It’s 10 songs that we all felt were nothing but bangers, we don’t put filler on anything, if there were only 8 good songs out of 50, then the album would be 8 songs and that’s that. As far as the next thing, we’re already working out new stuff as we’ve finished this so hopefully next year we’ll be back with another full length, that’s the goal at least”