BYZANTINE: 'Serpents' Enhanced Feature Revealed

When the new BYZANTINE album drops on July 12, many fans will be treated to a CD containing an enhanced feature never utilized before in heavy metal. This CD, "…And They Shall Take Up Serpents" (Prosthetic Records),will feature complete note-for-note guitar transcriptions, in both standard musical notation and guitar tablature notation, for aspiring guitarists to study from.

For most heavy metal guitarists wanting to learn songs from their favorite artists, you have always had to rely on outside companies such as Cherry Lane to publish tab books which you would have to purchase independently from the CD’s, or wait until one of the leading guitar magazines manage to transcribe one or two of the songs. With "…Serpents", all you have to do is buy the album, pop it into your compatible PC, download the software from the CD and you have the complete transcriptions. These transcriptions are guaranteed with 100 percent accuracy as they have been transcribed and notated by the guitarists themselves. As guitarist/vocalist Chris Ojeda Adams states, "Tony spent over 4 weeks transcribing these songs to the utmost level of accuracy, while I put my two cents in overseeing minor details and quality control."

The most spectacular aspect of these transcriptions is that they come complete with midi guitar files which not only play the songs back to you in midi format, they allow you to speed up or slow down the tempo of the song, repeat sections of the song for practice, and even erase sections and add your own ideas. "We always thought it would be awesome if 'Rust in Peace', 'Practice What You Preach' or 'Seasons in The Abyss' came with tab books, so we decided to do just that with this album," states Adams. "It is our way of not only paying some of our fans back for their support but also giving a unique instructional guitar tool to aspiring heavy metal guitarists. Plus, we thought it would be a fun thing to do."

Although some PC systems will not be able to utilize this enhanced feature, the band and the label assure most of you will be able to use this software efficiently and have a lot of fun with it as well. System requirements, troubleshooting notes as well as transcription notes by Tony Rohrbough are included within the album.