In this current (some, ie. me, might say crap) climate of music, it seems that lead guitar is taking a back seat, or in some cases sitting in the trailer. Every guitarist under the sun these days seems to always bleat on about a lead/solo not 'fitting in' with the track, and that its 'more important to have a song' This gets up my nose, do you think it's seriously because leads dont fit the music, or do you think it's because modern guitarists cannot play like their predeccesors from the 80's?
I ask, because it gladdens my heart to see all these teenage shredders on here, not suckered in by the 'nu-metal' generation of being forced to abandon their chops for some 'serious' drop D, one finger riffing.
I'm also utterly sick of the quiet to loud dynamic everyone and their auntie seems to employ, yes it's a good way of building tension, but I can just predict the way a song will sound nowadays 'huge groovy riff, nice and bouncy, drops into plodding bass figure, some moaning from the singer, before leaping back into aforementioned groovy riff' I think that's about got it pegged?
I know it worked for Nirvana, and Korn and a zillion other generic rock bands, but I for one am sick of it, more and more songs are sounding the same, when you only have 3 different riffs per song, the structure gets repetetive and boring!
I myself played guitar in a nu-metal band, I wasnt allowed to play leads, because the singer was an attention seeker, and everyone should be looking at HIM all the time. Now I consider myself quite an experimental guitarist, I used pick scrapes, harmonics and whang bar gargles to fill in the gaps, but I realised, Tom Morello has already DONE that sound.
You need to bring back lead guitar playing, maybe not in the over indulgent 80's fashion, but in some sense, so guys, when you're working out all your amazing tricks (and they are amazing) write a song to go with it, record it and upload it on vitaminic.com and the other unsigned music places, if you email me at nasum_human@yahoo.com I'll put a link to the page on my own website and I've got friends who'll do the same.
Only if the musicians refuse to compromise, can we break this deadlock of generic and commercial, not to mention boring and predictable music!