THE BEAST

Technology in music has advanced pretty far. As new conveniences appear, musicians are bound to use them. Amid the talk about "technology as a crutch", some bands loudly refuse to use click tracks, pre-recorded lines, vocals, and the like.

In a recent interview with Metal-Roos , vocalist Chad Gray of Mudvayne fame spoke with pride about his band performing live with another form of assistance - Marcus Rafferty, a living, breathing guitarist, filling up the space commonly left for technology (via Blabbermouth ):

"Yeah, well, we had a conversation, 'cause I told [the other] guys [in Mudvayne], 'cause I'd seen it. I'd been touring in it for ten years with Hellyeah . So I was seeing it everywhere around me. And I just looked at the guys and I'm, like, 'Dude, you guys have to understand, the listening audience and the listening experience of music has changed immensely since you guys have been on a stage.' And I'm, like, 'There are people running so much fucking tracks that literally when they play, they sound like a record; they sound like it's fucking perfect. And I'm, like, I don't know how well we're gonna do if we can't be as close to the sound of our album as we can be. And we literally had a fucking about a 30-second conversation about running tracks or whatever, and I'm, like, 'I personally don't want to. But what do you guys think?' And Matt [McDonough], my drummer's, like, 'I'm not fucking playing to a click.' And I'm, like, 'Good, because I don't wanna play to a click.' And I said, but what we're gonna have to do… I was, like, 'We're gonna have to get somebody to come in and help us fill our sound out' — guitars, backing vocals, shit like that. So we got our buddy Marcus. So we've got a dude that plays guitar, wears the face paint and shit, helps me with backing vocals, and it's awesome."

Gray praised Rafferty and noted the harder, fuller sound brought by his presence on stage, saying: "He's such an awesome addition to the band. And the sound is full now — the guitars sound really full. But we're not doing tracks. We brought in a utility player — literally — somebody just to help us. But he's really singing, he's really playing guitar. We don't have any tracks. We don't do that shit. Our music is fucking honest and our music has to be played that way. And I don't give a shit if anybody says any negative shit about us having Marcus. That was our answer to trying to be like other bands that just aren't doing it anymore."