Ian Mother F'ing Thornley

[Alex Kenivel]

I had not heard of him until just a couple of years ago when someone in the Official Original FB group asked me to do an HX tone match preset of his Suhr amp. The guy supplied me with tracks of Ian playing through the different channels, tracks of his own DI, and it came out pretty good - he was happy with it.

I decided to check out his actual music and was pleasantly surprised to hear that he sounds a lot like Chris Cornell.

 

[mchad]

Being Canadian, I heard a lot of Big Wreck in the 90s and always appreciated his abilities, for sure.

Of the more recent stuff, ie, ten years ago, haha, I dug this one a lot. Love the low-tuned guitars and tone, reminds me of Big Sugar (another “Big”-named Canadian band you should check out, if you haven't, especially the early stuff.)

I've got a few of his records and damn straight up the guy is the prime example of multi talented.

And hats off to whomever mixes these records. All those custom tunings and myriad tones make for some seriously crazy frequencies. You can still hear everything i.e the drums don't get lost in the soup.

 

[DrewJD82]

Ian had a brief solo period where the producer Nickelback'd him---just a touch.



Think he released both of those albums on Chad Kroeger's label.

Him and Chad Kroeger are buds, Ian’s got some writing credits on some Nickelback records and Chad’s singing on one of the newer tunes.

I love that song, quite a bit actually. The lyrical content sums up a rather large part of my life for many years!@

 

[DrewJD82]

I've got a few of his records and damn straight up the guy is the prime example of multi talented.

And hats off to whomever mixes these records. All those custom tunings and myriad tones make for some seriously crazy frequencies. You can still hear everything i.e the drums don't get lost in the soup.

The mixes are great, but the masters on basically anything from 2000 until their newest EP’s were mastered so damn hot it’s absurd. I never used to be one of those “this is brickwalled and I can’t listen to it” guys until their album ‘……But For The Sun’ came out and it’s one of those things you can’t unhear once you hear it. I’ve still yet to listen to that album all the way through.

Even stuff I thought sounded great previously, the whole Albatross album, but once I recognized it and put on “A Million Days”, the second the drums and bass kick in you hear it just smashing a limiter and it’s such a bummer because there’s such beautiful tones all over those records. I know Ian likes playing loud and while sometimes I scoff at the “That dude’s ears must be shot” comments in general, I really have to wonder if those albums being mastered that hot were because he couldn’t hear the distortion sitting on top of everything.