Emil Werstler Interview: Avalanche of Worms

By: Dr Matt Warnock

It’s not often that you find a university trained jazz guitarist shredding in an extreme-metal band. Even just the thought of it might have more than a few people scratching their heads at the prospect. For those of you who fall into this category, you only need to spend a few minutes with Levi/Werstler’s album Avalanche of Worms to realize that this isn’t that far out a concept. In fact, Emil Werstler’s jazz and blues background adds a level of harmonic sophistication and musicianship to his playing that immediately makes the album stand out, in a very good way.

Stepping out from their normal duties in their touring band Daath, Werstler and Levi, along with the team at Magna Carta records, released Avalanche of Worms as a quasi-side project from their regular routine. Featuring all instrumental rock-metal tracks, the album is a showcase for the technically proficient and melodically interesting work of these two six-string shredders.

Each song is a display of sheer guitar mastery, yet this isn’t two guys stroking their egos for sixty minutes. The music comes across as having meaning, of being thought through and nurtured, rather than just quickly thrown together and then shredded upon. It’s well worth checking out for any fan of the instrumental guitar genre.

Daath guitarist Emil Werstler recently sat down with Guitar International to talk about the new record, his thoughts on guitar education and why he loves to play PRS guitars.

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Matt Warnock: What was the initial inspiration behind releasing your latest record, Avalanche of Worms, as an instrumental album?

Emil Werstler: Really, it was all Magna Carta’s idea. After we got hip to the “Guitars That Ate My Brain” compilation album they contacted us and asked if we’d be into doing an album. They didn’t want it to be Daath, they wanted something different from what the band was doing.

Being the primary soloist in the band I’ve always wanted to do a solo record, but it was hard to find time to do it with all of our commitments. I think Eyal felt the same way. Once Magna Carta hit us up it was like, “OK, let’s do it.” We then went from wondering if it would be possible to do a record like this to finding guys to play on the session with us.

Check Out GI’s Review of “Guitars That Ate My Brain”

Matt: Since you both play in Daath together, is the new instrumental record simply a side project, or is this a new musical direction for the two of you?

Emil Werstler: It’s definitely it’s own thing, because the players on the album aren’t a part of Daath, but they had a lot to do with how we got the sounds we wanted on the instrumental record. Really, I see it as more of a trip back to what we’ve always done, it’s just that with Daath we have a particular sound that we stick to.

The new album explores a sound that was always there for us, though it’s new to the listeners. For us, it’s just what we sound like. The record is a bit unpredictable, with a lot of left turns, which is something we don’t necessarily get to do in Daath. We’re writing the new Daath record right now and it’s intense and intricate, but in a different way than Avalanche of Worms. Not better or worse, just different.

Matt: Is the idea behind Avalanche of Worms to give Daath fans a different view of the you and Eyal, or are you looking to bring this music to a whole now audience?

Emil Werstler: We always hope that what we do is going to make our careers more concrete. We wrote the album with the Daath audience in mind, but the really rewarding part is that it’s been easy to bring this record outside of the metal genre and open our music up to a new audience.

Now that we’ve been able to reach our metal fans with the new album, I think the key going forward will be to bring the music of Daath to the non-metal audience. We’re really looking at this whole project as a way to cross over a bit with our music, while proving that we’re not only capable of doing one thing.

Download “Avalanche of Worms” from Amazon.com

Matt: You have a background in blues and jazz music. Do you feel that by bringing those influences into your playing it helps you stand out against other metal bands on the scene today?

Emil Werstler: I think so. It definitely makes me stand out, Eyal as well, who comes from a classical music background. My roots are in jazz and blues, which I feel gives us this richness that isn’t there in a lot of the other extreme metal bands. I think it adds a lot to our sound. It gives it more harmonic depth. It’s not just chugga-chugga on an open string or something like that.

Matt: After listening to the record it’s apparent that both you and Eyal have incredible chops and technique. Do you have to spend a lot of time each day maintaining your chops to keep them at such a high level?

Emil Werstler: I’m a music instructor as well as a performer. One thing I’m asked about from my students is how to play fast. It’s funny because I’ve never really put much thought into it. Some guys work that stuff out and practice it a lot, but I’m just a fast guy as it is. I talk fast, I walk fast. It’s just a part of who I am.

As far as practicing goes, it’s really easy to lose those chops if I don’t spend time with my guitar. It’s like working out at the gym. If you take a week off you really notice it on that first day back with the weights. What I try and do is stay busy with my guitar throughout the day. Everything I do, in some way or the other, revolves around getting better. The first step to making that happen is having the guitar in my hands as much as I can.

A lot of guys in bands have to spend six to eight hours a day working a job that isn’t music related. For me, teaching guitar helps me get by, but it also keeps me surrounded by music all day long. I’m not practicing all day, but I’m constantly playing and listening to music. I’m always trying to get better and I try and have fun with it. It makes it easier to spend time doing something if you love what you’re doing.

Matt: Are there one or two exercises that you’ve kept in your playing for a long time, that you find work really well, that you could give us a rundown on?

Emil Werstler: Sure, but if you ask me this question tomorrow the answer might be totally different. [Laughs] Right now, I’m focusing on understanding that even though something is considered basic, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth working on. I make a lot of video lessons as part of my job, and one thing I’ve noticed is that the most meaningful information I’ve put out there, like “Here’s how to finger an Am7 arpeggio,” people will get insulted by it. They’ll write comments like, “Well, I can do that!” But that’s’ not the point.

Download "Avalanche of Worms" at Amazon.com

My advice to a young player is, don’t bite off more than you can chew. When I was growing up, and learning a million-note composition or whatever, I could play the notes but I had no understanding of what was going on harmonically or melodically in the song. I became a robot.

If you’re learning triads and think you’ve got a handle on it, ask yourself, “Is this below me, or am I not giving it the time of day because I don’t understand it’s relevance?’ I think relevance is something that’s missing from a lot of players’ daily regiments.

Matt: It sounds like you spend a lot of time thinking about teaching, and you take that side of your career very seriously. Have you always been interested in teaching or is this something that’s only surfaced recently?

Emil Werstler: I’ve always taught, since I was about fifteen or sixteen, and have always done it through a music school, or an online teaching site. I know a lot of guys who perform as much as I do don’t really put much thought into their teaching. They’re not taking it seriously, but then they won’t get a lot of return students. They’re just in it for a quick buck.

What keeps me caring about my students is that I think there are a lot of misconceptions about the guitar. It’s not like a piano or violin, which have hundreds of years of teaching history to fall back on. Because of this, I think there are a lot of bad guitar teachers out there. I was self taught until I went to college. When I got there I could already play just about everything I heard, and because of that I felt like some teachers thought of me as a threat. So I had a lot of shitty teachers who didn’t really do anything to help advance me as a musician.

My inspiration for teaching comes from thinking that there’s more to learning the guitar than some failed musician’s ego. The guitar isn’t that hard to learn with the right teacher. I don’t want to knock all teachers, I’ve had a lot of great teachers along the way and those are the guys that I model my teaching after.

Matt: You play PRS guitars on the new record, and with Daath. What is it about those guitars that drew you to them and caused you to choose them over brands like Gibson, Fender, Jackson and Ibanez?

Emil Werstler: The PRS guitars, for me, I go towards them because they were considered a classic rock, bluesy kind of guitar. That’s what attracts me to them so much. When I was growing up I played a guitar with a custom paint job, pencil-thin neck, shark-tooth inlays. Just all sorts of crap on it.

I quit playing metal for a while when I went to school to study jazz. I was learning bebop and heavy-duty jazz stuff all day long, and in that environment it’s inevitable that you’ll find guitar snobs. I would be walking down the hall and hear people say, “Here comes that metal dude with his ridiculous guitar.” I think eventually I got tired of having a guitar that caused people to judge me and prejudge my music because of how it looked. That really bothered me for some reason, I don’t really know why, it just did.

Check Out the PRS-22 at Musician's Friend

I sold that guitar and the question is always “Are you a Strat or Les Paul guy?” I realized I’m neither a Strat or Les Paul guy. At the time I had a guy that I was trading gear with and at one point he owed me for some gear I had given him. He called me up and told me he had a guitar for me to check out. Turns out it was a Standard 22 and I was sold.

I really love the PRS sound, the look, and it’s appropriate for my style of playing. When we went to Europe that guitar ended up getting so beat up that I ended up having to play my hollowbody on the tour. That got the attention of the folks at PRS and I’ve been exclusive ever since.