Toby Knapp has released his ninth solo album, Transmission To Purgatory, via via Moribund Records. The album features eight tracks of unique and patented soaring melodies, searing guitar solos and most importantly solid song crafting with stunning songs! An astounding slab of pure instrumental hard rock and heavy metal destined to revive and reinvigorate the genre for the 21st century. Transmission To Purgatory is a guitar driven instrumental heavy metal epic full of killer riffs and searing guitar solos.
Knapp has shared the following album footnotes:
"Here I am, thirty years into my "career" (labor of love). I'm on the cusp of turning 52 and my ninth solo album, Transmission To Purgatory. is released worldwide by the ever supportive, Moribund Records.
I felt I should say a few words about it. I began recording while I was stuck at home with Covid in 2021. I just remember tons of old school heavy metal riffs coming to me and I recorded all of them for future use.
For the most part, I would write entire songs and then solo over them where applicable. There are a few songs where the guitar melodies led the way ('Damnation's Corridor', 'Abramelin Carousel') and the whole mindset was "anything goes, but keep it in the 80's". This music sounds like my earliest demos. It's raw, budget-less and from the heart. The album sounds oddball and out of place when compared to the other metal albums coming out today. It's my own path and I'll continue walking it for better or worse and regardless of trends.
Some of the music was taken from a blues album I had planned thus the slide guitar segment and the heavy influence of the Yardbirds trinity; Beck, Clapton and Page. It inevitably went metal because the mid-eighties heavy metal influences are so heavily ingrained. Akira Takasaki, George Lynch, Yngwie Malmsteen, etc.
I used an Ibanez Tube Screamer into a Marshall MG100 head line in to an ancient Fostex MR-8 MK.2. The guitars were various Fender and Squier Stratocasters. I used the old Alexis drum machine from 1990. I tried to slow down my playing and concentrate on phrasing, vibrato and sustaining notes. I mixed everything down to a master cd on a TEAC CD recorder. This isn't my last solo album but it is my last low budget, drum machine bedroom recording.
Transmission To Purgatory isn't my best nor worst album. It's just a continuation of what I do and I hope you enjoy it. Now, onto the new Onward album..... Thanks for listening!"
Tracklist:
"Damnation's Corridor"
"No Raid at Dawn"
"The Law of Malice"
"Abramelin Carousel"
"Delirium Hierarchy"
"Hydrophobia #2"
"A Vulture's Bane"
"Black Light Temple"
Toby Knapp is an internationally renowned American guitar virtuoso schooled in the metal finger-picking styles of Uli Jon Roth and Yngwie Malmsteen. He was just 18 when he signed with the esteemed metal label Shrapnel Records in 1992, and continues to have a productive and prolific career in rock and heavy metal.
Knapp has since released over 22 albums under his own name and with his many bands, including Onward, Toby Knapp, Waxen, Where Evil Follows, Necrytis, Affliktor and Darken. He is also a full time guitar teacher and session studio and live musician for many world class national artists including Attila Csihar (Mayhem), Godless Rising, Fetid Zombie, Abhor and others, With both feet firmly planted in both progressive metal as well as thrash and death metal, he has given nods to the legends of heavy metal while blazing his own electrifying trail.
