WOULDN’T IT BE AWESOME TO TAKE GUITAR LESSONS FROM ARSIS’ JIM MALONE?

The times they are a-changin’. Maybe I was just totally out of the loop as a young snot growing up in NYC, but the idea of an awesome guitar player from an awesome metal band giving guitar lessons in between tours was unheard of; if I could have studied with Marty Friedman or Dan Spitz (I’m talking pre-Christian clockmaker “Dime stole my solos” Dan Spitz, when I still thought he was cool), I would have; alas, my guitar teacher was a dorky guy named Steve who became the punchline to the joke “What do you call a musician without a girlfriend?” (Answer: “Homeless.”)

ANYWAY, this is a very long way of letting you know that Arsis mastermind Jim Malone is giving guitar lessons in the NY area. In case you’ve had your head up your ass the past few years, Malone can SHRED like a motherfucker, AND he’s a mind-blowingly good writer of melodic technical death metal, AND he can do awesome death metal vocals. I’m saying you could learn a lot from the dude.

I have no idea what Malone’s rates are, but you can hit him up jamesarsis [at] hotmail.com. I met Malone once for all of two seconds, but his handshake said to me “I am a patient mentor who will not make fun of you for being retardedly bad at the guitar even though I myself am something of a god.”

It’s enough to make me wanna take guitar lessons again.

-AR