Fretbuzz

The month’s best guitar music – a hand-picked selection of the finest fretwork on wax

With their 2022 debut album, Cardinal Black showed the world how the budding guitar hero in their ranks could thrive in a band environment. Here, Chris Buck explains how its follow-up has taken his playing and songwriting to the next level

Amid the mayhem of his European tour, Joe takes time out to give us a guided tour around his 2025 live gear, delivers the lowdown on some of his more storied guitars, and tells us why his mighty multi-amp rig has to run at breaking point in order to make the earth move and those riffs resonate…

A monthly look at must-hear artists from all corners of the guitar world, from the roots of their sound to the tracks that matter most

SEEMINGLY OUT OF nowhere, the Darkness swooped out of Suffolk, England, and onto the international music scene in 2003 with their high-voltage debut, Permission to Land. At a time when hipster bands i

GEOGRAPHICALLY, IT’S A long way from the sticky-floored rehearsal spaces of Motor City to the Roman-era cobblestone streets of Bath in southwest England. But it doesn’t take a musicologist to join the