Sam Hill drops Triumvirate EXCLUSIVELY to Atomic!

Albury/Wodonga local heavy artist, Sam Hill has dropped a huge track overnight opening the gates to a flood of new heavy music from the border town!

His track, Triumvirate recorded at the Border Academy of Rock’s Jam Studio dropped with a play-through video on youtube and more excitingly, EXCLUSIVE to Atomic!

We caught up with Sam overnight to chat about his debut release, Triumvirate!

Tell me about the track ‘Triumvirate’.

Triumvirate is an instrumental track that heavily focuses on melodic, technical riffing, mixed with emotive lead guitar sections with dueling harmonies, and relentless metal drumming with plenty of double kicks.

This is the first original instrumental track of this style I’ve properly recorded and mixed to use for a play through video on my YouTube channel.

What are some inspirations behind this track?

I really wanted to write something melodic and catchy, while remaining tastefully technical with a big focus on screaming guitar sections that captures the listeners attention. I had been listening to a couple of instrumental bands such as Intervals and Polyphia at the time I came up with the rhythm sections which I think inspired me to take that approach.

I wanted to mix the technical prog metal elements of the riffs with a more old school approach to the leads, using plenty of big vibrato bends and harmonies. The late Chuck Schuldiner from the band Death has been a huge inspiration for my high gain lead playing over the years.

What genre would you consider this track?

It’s a bit of an amalgamation of various styles, but at its core I would call it melodic progressive metal with thrash and hard rock elements.

Tell me about your recording process.

I recorded everything myself at home with a small home studio setup using Reaper. What you are hearing is two rhythm tracks, two lead tracks, bass and drums. Literally all the guitar tones you hear on the track are done using the Neural DSP Nolly plugin, which is one of the most accurate guitar plugins I’ve heard so far and really feels like an amp when you play with it.

I also recorded the bass myself using an Ampeg SVT-3 pro plugin, and the drum tracks I programmed using the GetGood Drums Invasion virtual kit which sounds fantastic for heavier genres. It’s really amazing the quality of sounds you can get from plugins these days and the convenience is a big plus too.

Tell me about your rig, what are you playing?

The guitar I used for this recording is an LTD H-1001 deluxe fitted with a Dimarzio super distortion. I used a Warwick Corvette double buck for the bass parts also.

Like I previously mentioned, all tones for the recording were done using plugins, but my usual rig in a live situation would be either my Peavey 3120 or Peavey 6505MH running through a Randall 4×12 fitted with vintage 30’s.

As far as pedals go, for heavier styles of music I would run an Ibanez Tubescreamer through the front, and a Keeley Caverns for delay sounds on leads, all kept under control with an EHX Silencer noise gate.

Do you have any other releases planned for the near future?

Definitely, I want to continue these instrumental tracks regularly, but cover a wide variety of rock and metal genres in the process. Song writing versatility keeps it interesting for me and is very inspiring, so the next track I release may sound completely different to this one.

I also have another band project currently on the go by the name of ‘Extirpate the Idols’ which a full on, aggressive, technical death metal band. The plan is to release a 5 track EP in the near future with myself handling guitar, bass and vocals for the recording, while drums are being handled by a crazy session drummer I’ve found that lives in Poland. I would consider this project the pinnacle of my song writing and playing ability so I’m going to take my time to get it as perfect as I can.

In addition to the video release on youtube, Sam has put his track up exclusively on Atomic’s Stream.Space! You can stream and buy it from there! (Seriously, buy it… Creatives need food too it turns out…)