Bilmuri Explodes After the Release of American Motor Sports

Former Attack Attack! man Johnny Franck’s joyous rock project Bilmuri has exploded after the launch of last year’s ultra-polished, ultra-cool album American Motor Sports and tours with Sleep Token and Babymetal.

Former Attack Attack! man Johnny Franck’s joyous rock project Bilmuri has exploded after the launch of last year’s ultra-polished, ultra-cool album American Motor Sports and tours with Sleep Token and Babymetal.

Now, as Bilmuri prepare for huge 2024 festival slots and a headline tour, guitarist Reese Maslen tells Total Guitar how the band's unique sound was achieved on one of the year's hottest records.

Better Hell has been a smash hit. What do you think makes the song so special?

Johnny Franck: “I think it’s getting the simple things right. That main lead took four guitarists to get right in terms of articulation, even though it sounds simple.

“I had a dude from Mississippi, Eric Woolard, put some really traditional country on there. The country guys are some of the best in the world, but they don't get as much credit as the prog guys. Shining a light on how cool country guitar can be was important to me.”

There’s a great blend of modern rock tones and acoustic.

Franck: “Modern music can sound like a fucking computer – I hate that. It felt like a tightrope walk, but by blending organic instruments with the digital sound, I felt like I created a good middle ground between the two.

“You get the power and clarity of the low-end on the digital side, but you get the purity of the acoustics. I don’t feel like those two things have really been brought together before in a way that was as satisfying.”

Live, Reese, you do most of the heavy lifting on the guitar.

Reese Maslen: “I come strictly from the metal world. When I joined, the first thing that Johnny sent me was A COWBOYS HEAVY LOAD, saying, ‘Can you do this solo?’ and I was like, ‘I don't fucking know!’ I’d never tried to do chicken picking before. This band has forced me to learn a lot of different styles.”

Franck: “Oftentimes I’ll have something in my head that I have no ability to do, and I’m like, ‘Reese, can you do this?’ and he’ll figure out a way. We’ve been making interludes for this new tour so we can flex a bit; I was like, ‘Reese, can you do this thumping thing like I hear it in my head?’ He figured that out pretty quickly!”

I feel like every flavor of one through four serves the overall pie of Bilmuri. Except fifth position

You don’t make his life easy, then?

Franck: “I throw him in the deep end a lot! What’s really interesting is that a lot of these solos are written in standard, and Reese had to transpose them to DADGAD for live.”

Maslen: “We don’t have the infrastructure to do effective guitar switching, so it was out of necessity. It really does feel like you’re rediscovering how to play guitar; I’ve just figured out how to sweep in DADGAD. It’s so goofy, and it looks super-weird, but it’s really unlocked something for me.”

You’re both Strat players.

Franck: “Almost everything is a Strat in the fourth position. It’s still got aggression, but it’s got this jangle that I’ve been searching for my whole life. Single coils going through a heavy amp have this depth to them that humbuckers just can’t get.

“I feel like every flavor of one through four serves some sort of thing in the overall pie of Bilmuri. Except fifth position – f*ck that; it sounds like ass! But 95 percent of it is that fourth position. I just get my guitar modded so that if it’s all the way down, it’s in the fourth position.”

And you’ve always whacked an EverTune on your Strat.

Franck: “No-one wants to see a singer tune a guitar on stage. Reese can go back and tune while I’m talking to the audience. Actually, there’s a lot of feeling that could get lost if Reese was on EverTune. I’m there to collect the energy of the crowd and put it back out.”

What amps are you running?

Maslen: “We’ve just switched to Quad Cortex. We used Line 6 Helix on the Sleep Token tour in the UK and it was a nightmare. They were constantly buzzing and we were constantly having to troubleshoot, which Sleep Token never had to do. That was the turning point.

“We spent a weekend jamming and getting tones together, then a week later I opened it up and it sounded like shit! I don't know what we were on, but it was not good. So I fell back to what I know: a Mesa head with a Marshall cab. A lot of the clean tones are Match