Our Recap Of Episode #14 Of Metal Morpheus On The Borderline!!

We're falling behind on recapping episodes of Metal Morpheus on local internet radio station The Borderline, so let's take a deep dive into some more, starting with episode #14 from October 3rd, where host Josh Amendola concluded his trilogy of guitar-centric episodes with one all album all about guitar heroes! Specifically, these are guitarists that Josh is a big fan of as musicians, and with one exception, none were previously featured in the preceding Metal Morpheus episodes on shred guitar or amazing solos. Also, most of these are not "metal" guitarists, so just a heads-up, but they were influential on metal guitarists to come. The 67 minute episode begins with Josh explaining his criteria for inclusion in the episode, and the first artist on offer is pioneering Mississippi blues guitarist Charley Patton's song "Poor Me" (0:50), followed by the father of jazz guitar, Eddie Lang and his song "April Kisses" (4:40).

Blues guitar legend Robert Johnson is next via his song "Hellhound On My Trail" (8:30), with Josh flipping back to jazz pioneers with his next two cut, they being legendary French guitarist Django Reinhardt's song "Nuages" (13:20) and American guitarist Charlie Christian's "Swing To Bop" (19:20). We go to Spain next via influential classical guitarist Andres Segovia with his relatively brief song "Bach Bouree" (23:20), followed by the flamenco musician Sabicas with "Arabian Dance" (25:20). The first half of the episode concludes with a shift to rock via the late great Jimi Hendrix with his song "Hear My Train A Comin'" (29:55). Next, Josh returns to flamenco via Spanish guitar virtuoso Paco de Lucia's song "Impetu" (36:10), before surprisingly playing a song by country guitar great Chet Atkins, namely "Dark Eyes" (39:00). We get back to a heavier track with the legendary hard rock band Van Halen! 

Featured the previous week in the episode on amazing solos, this time we get an Eddie Van Halen solo showcase via the minute-long "Spanish Fly" (42:25). Rap metal icons Rage Against The Machine and their guitarist Tom Morello are next via their song "Ashes In The Fall" (44:05), but we follow them with this episode's last divergence outside of metal, courtesy of late Canadian jazz/country guitarist Lenny Breau's "The Claw" (49:15). Metalheads will get their fix via the episode's penultimate song, namely British metal pioneers Black Sabbath and guitarist Tony Iommi's Dio-era cut "Computer God" (55:10), and the episode ends with that week's local artist pick, namely early 2010s local/Central Algoma death metal band Crimson Crusade! Their song here is "Pillage" (1:02:10) from their 2013 EP "Upon The Eve Of War", which featured Devon Lucier and Pillory frontman Robert Sartini sharing guitar duties.

Josh does wrap the episode up by implying that this is just "volume 1" for episodes on guitar heroes, with "many more to come" featuring guitar greats not mentioned on October 3rd, but the episodes to air so far have largely returned to band-centric topics, and we will get to those hopefully soon. While the metal quotient of this episode is definitely lacking compared to prior weeks, the purpose was to outline influential guitarits who paved the way, and to to ignore these guitarists' contribution to the modern day tropes of metal guitar playing would be foolish. If anything, I'd have considered going chronological with this episode to sort of count the steps as we got to metal and it's evolution, and Josh's pronunciation of some names was a little off, but this was an informative and entertaining listen, and tune in to The Borderline tonight at 9:00 PM for episode #19 of Metal Morpheus!

Of course, you can hear all previous and episodes on demand on their website, with tonight's episode following suit after the fact, and we'll look at episode #15 on the SMS soon as Josh returns to spotlighting bands rather than guitarists individually. That's all for today, but stay tuned for news on a big recent album release and more this week! Thanks everyone!