Hello there, and welcome to Guitar World Editors’ Picks – our monthly guide to the guitar tracks that have captured the attentions of our editors over the past four weeks or so.
With the aid of our Spotify playlist below, we’ve rounded up all our favorite new releases from the month of November, and put them under the microscope to wax lyrical on the playing, tones, and songwriting that have set our six-string senses a-tingling.
Michael Astley-Brown – Editor-in-Chief
As the world obsesses over retailers’ price cutting, I’m happy to confirm head cutting has been on the agenda for guitarists this month. Fresh slabs of heavy from Lamb of God and Heriot have been reverberating in my skull, but it’s the latest from Sylosis – for my money, the most bankable ‘classic’ thrash band in metal – that has me reaching for my nearest EMG-loaded bruiser. Since leaving Architects, Josh Middleton has approached his main squeeze with a renewed vigor, and The New Flesh is the kind of all-killer track that can unite every school of metal.
Switching to a different kind of heavy, Kiesel eight-stringer Ando San has chiseled his unique vision for prog-meets-hip-hop (prog-hop) into a work of fine art. Thick Neck melds a devastating lyrical flow over grinding riffs. Think Kendrick Lamar meets Deftones. It’s sneaking stealth guitar chops into a mainstream-adjacent sound, and that makes Mr San a hero in our book.
Finally, Des Rocs may have reinvented the shape of the electric guitar, but the NYC rocker’s latest three-and-a-half-minute rager is the perfect marriage of Aerosmith and the Cult. An Aerocult, if you will. Or a Cultsmith.
Anyway, The Juice is about as perfect a driving rock song as you could possibly hope for in the year of our lord 2025. Pentatonic riffs are snaking all over the place, the chorus hook wraps itself around your brain and compresses your temporal lobes until it’s the only thing you can hear, and the tones are raunchy with a capital Raunch. Des Rocs has always carried himself like a rockstar, and tracks like this are reasons why.
Matt Parker – Deputy Editor
Dearborn, Michigan group Prostitute offer a pressure-cooker of post-punk, white-hot rage and a METZ-like powerwall of noise, with elements of traditional Arabic scales and instrumentation. I was recently levelled by their show in Liverpool – a lightning flash of rave-volume drums, samples and heavy distortions that barely let up, until the last note rang-off and they left an audience rabidly chanting for more. And, in a move I rated highly, did not capitulate to an encore.
All Hail is probably the most immediate example from their 2024 album Attempted Martyr, which is getting long in the tooth at this point, but has just been released on Mute in the UK, so I’m taking the window to get it in here.
I don’t know what it is about the nights drawing in that drives me to shoegaze. Perhaps it was the months riding the bus into central London listening to the Cocteau Twins, when I worked at Virgin Records.
Either way, if you missed mercury’s incredible GW-exclusive session earlier this year, then don’t sleep on newbie Heaven. It’s a killer, cathartic slab of shoegaze schadenfreude – full of melodramatic leads and colossal crunching rhythms.
LA trio Blackwater Holylight is scratching a similar itch, albeit with more of a Sabbath riff bed in Heavy, Why? The answer’s in the question, obviously, but this is doom-y, defiant and jubilant – and the perfect rumbling soundtrack for my traditional pre-Christmas cycle between mild elation and mild depression.
Jackson Maxwell – Associate Editor
New music-wise, November’s been a tad quieter than the fall-avalanche months that preceded it, but have no fear, my proverbial cup has still runneth over.
First, I’ve gotta yap about Julian Lage. I’ve proudly flown the flag for the jazz maestro (and one-time GW columnist) since 2021, when I was absolutely bowled over by his masterful – then-new – album, Squint. Opal is the first preview we’ve gotten from his forthcoming Scenes from Above LP, and a spin of it will make clear to anyone why he’s one of the most distinct voices in modern guitar.
Over an easy-going shuffle beat, Lage embellishes and dances around the song’s ear-candy changes with stunning arpeggios and classy phrases. The album’s primarily got Lage’s name on it, but he doesn’t care one bit about showing off – his tone, and sense of how to bring the best out of the melody, are something to behold.
There’s been plenty to like on the acoustic end of the spectrum, too. Pajarito, the stunning new single from the ever-underrated José González, for one, brought back (fond) memories for me of trying to learn (i.e. stumbling around) the divine fingerpicking on his classic cover of the Knife’s Heartbeats.
Singer-songwriter Tyler Ramsey and My Morning Jacket guitar-slinger Carl Broemel, meanwhile, engage in some front porch-primed, virtuosic unplugged dialog on the folky instrumental, Elizabeth Brown.
Elsewhere, anyone who, like me, is a sucker for anything even resembling ‘90s indie will find themselves as taken by This is Lorelei’s Holo Boy as I am, while those partial to the Tuareg guitar styles of Northern Africa (guilty again) will love Tellalt, the propulsive, almost spooky new tune from fast-rising Algerian combo Imarhan.
Matt Owen – News Editor
As someone who loves both Mark Lettieri and Justus West, I can’t begin to describe how gassed I was when I saw Neural DSP had brought them both together for Top Down Suits (not on streaming yet, boo) – one of many collaborations that Neural DSP has facilitated over the past week or so, presumably in preparation for Black Friday.
It’s a collab I never thought would happen, but one I’m overjoyed to see. Their playing styles complement each other so well. Top Down Suits sounds like the theme song for a 1990s buddy cop flick in the best way possible. The funk hook is just such an earworm. West’s borderline bebop lead effort has been added to my ‘solos to learn list’. Lettieri’s versatility as a rhythm player and blinding soloist continues to astound me. Thank you, Neural DSP.
Speaking of Neural DSP, one of the firm’s most notable signature artists, Mateus Asato, is gearing up to release his highly anticipated debut solo album, which has given the neo-soul virtuoso the opportunity to revisit some old demos.
Six years ago, he posted ‘the breakup song [idea]’ on YouTube, promising in the description he was “saving [it] for later”. Well, “later” has arrived, and the final version is just spell-binding. The runs are effortlessly smooth, the tones are to die for, and the chord melodies are classic Asato. Essential listening for guitar fans.
More essential listening I implore you to wrap your ears around this month include Novo Amor and Yvette Young’s new single monty (okay, I’m cheating, it came out late last month, but it deserves a mention). Young’s edgy, pristinely produced guitar hooks that carry the track are a perfect foil for the equally chopped vocals. A masterclass in modern bedroom indie pop production.
And I’d kick myself if I didn’t give a shoutout to Kings of Leon’s new EP. Give the whole thing a spin, but start with The Wolf. It’s giving Only by the Night vibes, which is great news for me – that’s my favorite KoL album.
Janelle Borg – Staff Writer
I must admit that Rosalía’s album, Lux, has been on constant rotation, and has definitely clinched the number-one spot for my album of the year.
Much has been written about the album’s classical music influences (Rosalia did, in fact, work with the London Symphony Orchestra for this record) and its already cemented status as an avant-garde classical pop masterpiece, with even the impresario of musical theater, Andrew Lloyd Webber, giving his two cents.
The track I chose, however, harks back to Rosalía’s flamenco roots. La Rumba del Perdon sees the artiste collaborate with guitarists Joselito Acedo and Oscar Lagos for a track that spotlights the flamenco guitar. The result? An effervescent four-minute, 11-second piece that celebrates the lineage of Spain’s national art form – and introduces it to a whole new generation.
And speaking of modern masterpieces, Florence + the Machine is back with the haunting Everybody Scream. The track I picked, Made by Men, is a masterclass in songwriting.
The musical accompaniment is simple – acoustic guitar, piano, and a sprinkle of strings and drums. The focus of the track is clearly on Florence Welch’s penmanship, which moves between the nuances of relationship dynamics as poetically as it does in its subtle critique of misogyny in the music industry.
Moving on from orchestral-driven pieces… Just yesterday, I stumbled across the excellent Jack Francis and Hattie Whitehead at a grassroots music venue in Brighton (England) – two artists that will definitely go down well with fans of Chris Stapleton and Joni Mitchell.
The two have just released their own folk-tinged take on Talking Heads’ This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) – a version that wouldn’t be out of place on an early noughties indie rom-com soundtrack – and a great introduction to these two emerging artists.
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