Commented Hurdle: "There’s a lot going on for Negativa and we’re very excited. We’re back in studio to record three songs, the same fantastic studio, with the same team. We’re once again honoured to work with these guys (Pierre Remillard and Jean﷓Yves Theriault). We have nearly 75 minutes of new music ready for the album and we’re very anxious to share it with all of you. We’d like to warn you that our new songs are nothing like what you heard on the MCD, they’re more ambient and emotional. We’ve also made some changes to our vocals. Finally, we will soon start doing shows. We’re looking forward to playing live and meeting you guys. Intense moments guaranteed ! Thanks for your support and see you soon."
www.negativa.ca www.myspace.com/negativa1

NEGATIVA - Live Shows

August 1 @ The Metal Bar, Toronto (Ontario)
With: Quo Vadis, Remain, Crimson Shadows, Gates Of Winter

August 2 @ The Underground, Hamilton (Ontario)
With: Quo Vadis, Deathmarch, Gates Of Winter, Kronosfear

August 3 @ The Embassy Hotel, London (Ontario)
With: Quo Vadis, Baptized In Blood, Excruciating Thoughts, Gates Of Winter

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#13 Luc Lemay (Gorguts, Negativa)
Age he first started playing guitar: 15.
Formal musical training: “I’m self-taught on guitar. When I turned 21 I started playing violin and switched to viola later, and went to college to pursue my viola studies. In 1995 when Gorguts relocated to Montréal I got admitted at the Music Conservatory for composition. But I still don’t know my notes on the guitar neck.”
First song he learned to play: S.O.D., “March of the S.O.D.”
Current favorite axe: Joe Satriani 7-string custom model.

Luc Lemay counts the opening riff to “Inverted,” the first track on Gorguts’ 2001 LP From Wisdom to Hate, as the riff he’s proudest of. It’s a harsh, jagged riff, full of atonal squeals that sound almost random, yet it’s immediately catchy. It’s the kind of thing most tech-grind bands would kill to write, but few of them can wrench the pure emotion out of the technicality that Lemay can. His expressive playing on From Wisdom, and especially on their 1998 opus Obscura, is at the outer limits of death metal guitar, informed by jazz, modern classical, and Canada’s greatest metal guitarist, Denis “Piggy” D’Amour of Voivod.

“My composition teacher at the conservatory—who studied with [avant-garde composer Karlheinz] Stockhausen—was very impressed with the musicianship and the composition skills [in death metal],” Lemay says proudly. “In his opinion this music style was very creative and avant-garde in its own field. To me, death metal is the most innovative of all the types of metal that exist. Even in the mid ‘90s, when death metal was seen as style that had given all it had to give, it kept growing even without having the big press and media behind it. This style never ceased to innovate and push the metal language even further.”

Gorguts did plenty themselves to advance metal’s vocabulary, especially on Obscura. Drummer Steve MacDonald’s suicide means that a Hall of Fame won’t be happening, but Lemay offers up some insight into the conception of one of death metal’s sovereign statements.

“I remember us sitting down and already having a vision of what we wanted to do,” he recalls. “We talked about the ingredients of our musical language we wanted to expand. We decided to consciously avoid fast-picking riffing, which is what The Erosion of Sanity was mainly made of; rhythm- and tempo-wise, we wanted to have slow parts and blast beats, with no mid-paced beats at all, to avoid the strong character of the old Gorguts sound.” Surprisingly, the all-new lineup that helped Lemay birth Obscura had only been together for about a month when writing started. “Thirteen years later, all I can say is that we were very much inspired by each other and very passionate about composition like we’d never been before in our previous band experiences. When you have a vision, along with the strength of collective creation, that’s when the fifth presence makes its entrance and great artistic moments are born.”

Determining the 20 greatest death metal guitarists of all time was an appropriately brutal, bloody and chaotic process. In its initial planning stages, this was to be a list of the 10 greatest death metal guitarists of all time. But then the IMs and emails started flying back and forth among Decibel’s editorial staff: What about so-and-so? That guy over this guy? What the fuck do you mean, “overrated?” Cases were made. Feelings got hurt. The fact that any of us have girlfriends was regarded with solemn wonder. Ten guitarists became 20. Finally, we have a list that’s 100% guaranteed not to please everybody. Which is kind of the point: Death metal, as maligned as it is (it all sounds the same, you can’t understand what the guy is saying, Cookie Monster, blah blah et cetera), offers up enough diversity and has so many accomplished, often visionary players that making this list was fucking HARD. At first glance, there’s not much common ground between Baz Thompson’s monolithic chugging and Muhammed Suiçmez’s impossible über-shredding, or between Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt and grindcore riff-factory Scott Hull. What all of our picks do share, whether they’re self-taught or classically trained, dedicated to progression or happy to pay tribute to their metal guitar heroes, is a discipline and devotion that we’ll put up against any other genre any day of the week. Given another few weeks and a mediator to keep things from getting violent, we probably could have stretched it to 40.