Mark Tremonti has achieved enormous success as the guitarist in Alter Bridge and the recently reunited Creed. However, he readily admits, “Honestly, I wouldn’t be here right now if it wasn’t for Metallica and Master Of Puppets!”
This exclusive interview delves into how his life changed after he heard that classic album, and why down-picking has become one of his greatest strengths.
What stands out to you about the first time you heard Metallica?
“One of the most significant Metallica tracks for me is Welcome Home (Sanitarium). When I heard my older brother playing that in the room above me, I just couldn’t fall asleep.
“So I went up there asking, ‘What’s this song about a sanitarium?!’ He gave me Master of Puppets and I did not sleep that night. I was just blown away by what I was hearing. Before that, I was listening to the Beastie Boys, Agent Orange… nothing metal. Hearing that album made me go out and carry on searching for the heaviest music I could find.
“What I loved most was the dynamics. That’s something I really credit Metallica for. A lot of heavy bands from that period didn’t use dynamics like they did. Metallica would write these beautiful intros on songs like Battery, Damage, Inc. and The Call Of Ktulu, the latter being the song with which I developed my own fingerstyle technique. Then there was all that beautiful stuff in To Live Is To Die.
“My favourite song of all time could very well be Orion. That variation is a really big thing for me, going from cleaner verses to those kick-you-in-the-nuts choruses, which is what you hear on Welcome Home. Funnily enough, there’s a video online of me covering that song on a Hello Kitty guitar!”
It’s no secret that a big part of that sound comes from James Hetfield’s down-picking…
“James Hetfield’s right hand shaped me as a guitar player. All of us have our strengths and weaknesses, right? It usually comes down to what you grew up playing and practising. With me, I know one of my biggest strengths is all that right hand downpicking rhythm stuff that sounds like ‘Jud jud jud’ because it just keeps going like an engine. That’s where I feel comfortable.
“I don’t need to warm up for that stuff, I can go straight into it because that’s my background. I learned it from bands like Metallica, Slayer, Forbidden and Testament… but Metallica were always the main one. Guitar-wise, Metallica were always more influential on me.”
It’s interesting how a lot of those riffs don’t sound quite right using alternate picking.
“As much as you might not realize it, upstrokes and downstrokes sound a bit different probably because of the angle of the pick.