Lamb Of God's Mark Morton talks about his live guitars

With the just-released album Resolution, a modern-day masterpiece of bludgeoning brilliance, the Virginia-based band Lamb Of God have climbed to the top of the heavy metal mountain. Despite the bird's-eye view, guitarist Mark Morton is keeping a level head. "People are saying we're the latest and greatest thing," he says, "which is flattering, of course, but a lot of these folks don't know how long we've been around. This is our seventh album. We've been building steadily to get where we are now."

While the band's career trajectory has been relatively unhurried, the riffs on Resolution are rapid-fire. Morton re-creates every lick on stage with a modest collection of guitars. On the following pages, he describes the axes he uses live.

Mark Morton's live guitars

"The red and black guitars are basically the same, and I have backups of both. One is tuned to C# and the other's tuned to D. But because most of our songs are in drop D, I guess the black guitar is the main one.

"Both guitars are Jackson Custom Shop Dominions outfitted with DiMarzio Dominion pickups, and they sound amazing."

Mark Morton's live guitars

"I use the red Dominion a little less than the black one. What I like about the guitars really goes into the making of them, how I tried to take some of the things I loved about older models, like Les Pauls, Telecasters and Jaguars, and I tried to put them together into one new style of guitar with some modern touches.

"There really isn't a reason why I chose the black over the red as far as number one and number two goes. It's just the luck of the draw, really."

Mark Morton's live guitars

"I'm a huge fan of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. I guess that doesn't come up too much, but yeah, I'm so into what Kurt and the rest of the guys did, their whole sound.

I asked the people at Fender if I could check the guitar out, and they hooked me up with a Cobain Jaguar. As soon as I got it, I was really impressed with the way it played and sounded. I threw it into the set almost immediately. I play it on the songs Descending and Contractor."

Mark Morton's live guitars

"My wife gave me this strap for Christmas, which is a replica of Jimi Hendrix's Woodstock strap. As far as the duct tape goes, I thought it was appropriate because it looked totally right for a Jaguar. We've all seen it, the whole duct tape look. But what I discovered was that it's a foolproof strap lock system. You can't beat it."