Physical Education Animals As Leaders
With two virtuosos playing eight-strings, the possibilities are limitless – as illustrated in this prime example of ‘thumping’
s one of the leading names in the tech-metal revolution of the late noughties, Animals As Leaders quickly ended up becoming one of the most universally loved and respected instrumental acts on the planet. Negating any need for a bass player, guitarists Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes employ eight-strings to cover a huge amount of sonic ground from the lowest low end to screaming lead tones high up the neck. In the process, alongside other bands like Meshuggah and Deftones, they’ve helped popularise the extended-range instrument – with Tosin now even running and endorsing his own company Abasi Concepts with great success.
Physical Education, from the trio’s less metallic and more fusion-led third album The Joy Ofmotion, helped establish them as a more musically diverse and progressive-sounding band, with some jaw-dropping interplay between the two eight-string virtuosos and drummer Matt Garstka. It now stands as their highest-streaming and most heavily played song, by quite some distance, while also being far from their heaviest. To get the tones heard on the record, Tosin used his then-signature Ibanez TAM100 through a Fractal AXEFX II.
When The Joy Ofmotion was released in 2014, Tosin explained how he was getting into more minimalist and vocal-inspired styles of phrasing using more bends. “This record is where I’m at as a player,” he said. “I’ve been listening to a lot of Derek Trucks to learn about restraint. Because he plays slide, he can’t do a sweep arpeggio – that style is usually limited to one note on one string. It may just be his intuition as a player, but to my ears he almost sounds like a gospel singer. There’s something really impactful about it.”
For certain sections of Physical Education and, indeed, many other famous Animals As Leaders cuts, he uses a technique he often refers to as ‘thumping’ – where he picks up and down in quick succession using his thumb – in tandem with his other fingers to create rhythm grooves and top lines that feel ethereal and otherworldly. “Why limit yourself to one stroke with your thumb when you can do double?” he once noted, while explaining how it’s a bass technique that guitar players often find challenging to begin with. “If you’ve played any fingerstyle stuff on guitar you’ve already started using an open right hand,” he reasoned, “but what feels counterintuitive is the upstroke with the thumb, which is the crux of the technique.”
There are also a lot of ghost notes in riffs like the intro section, where Tosin allows his guitar to speak rhythmically instead of melodically, filling in the gaps to provide a sense of motion. It’s a combination of these different techniques, as well as the finger-twisting riffs and classy jazz-rock leads, that helped turn Animals As Leaders into one of the most inspiring guitar bands of their generation.