If there's any game that gets GameSpy staffers up and out of their comfy desk chairs, it's Guitar Hero. Whether it's weekend parties where we go head to head on Bark at the Moon, or staring in awe as Sluggo rocks out on Expert with a guitar behind his neck, we just can't get enough.

If you're psyched about Guitar Hero II, then we've got a special treat for you: an interview with Marcus Henderson, the guitarist behind recording much of the music in the original game who's also deeply involved with Guitar Hero II. I was able to sneak some details on the new game out of him, so read on!



GameSpy: Hey Marcus, tell us a little about yourself, your band, and how you first got involved with Guitar Hero.
Marcus: My name is Marcus Henderson. I am a professional guitarist and play guitar for my band Drist. We're influenced by bands like Kill Switch Engage, Iron Maiden, Atreyu; basically we're heavy melodic metal. We just released a new album called Orchids and Ammunition, and it can be found on iTunes.

Now that I got that out of the way, I got the call last year out of the blue to do a The Darkness song for a competitor's video game that was released about a year ago. They got someone else to do it, but they said they'd keep my name on file. It's like when you apply for a job and they don't hire you, but they say they're going to "hold your application" and it goes straight into the circular file. I kind of forgot about it, but then I got a call from Wave Group (the sound design company and studio behind recording the music for Guitar Hero) and they wanted me to come in and play something, but they couldn't tell me about it until I got there. The song was Symphony of Destruction by Megadeth, and they needed it kicked out in little to no time at all for the upcoming 2005 E3 build for a video game called Guitar Hero.
GameSpy: So you had no preparation ahead of time? It was just "here's a song we need, let's record"?
Marcus: Exactly. I was given maybe 3 days or so to prepare, and then the session was booked. Of course, I didn't know much about the game; nobody knew anything about the game, but I was super excited that they needed a guitar player. I mean, it could have gone either way. It could really suck, or this could be one of the most ground-breaking things in the world. Over the course of recording Symphony of Destruction, I realized how much dedication and what a realistic level of accuracy Wave Group was putting into the tracks, and I was just saying "Wow." This was something special. I felt it was going to be something special early on, but I was under NDA and couldn't tell anyone about it.
GameSpy: You couldn't even tell the band?
Marcus: No, the band thing came later, but I couldn't tell anyone! The cool thing is, when they got back from E3 with the build, which included the Megadeth tune that I did, we learned that Guitar Hero won a Best of Show award, I was flabbergasted. This thing was gonna be huge. I wanted to be a part of it, and as luck would have it, I got another call from Wave Group to do another song. My personal approach in life is just to do everything as hard and as fast and as incredibly sick as you can, and with that approach, I was able to lend my own work ethic to the tunes, which fit right into Wave Group's expectations. That one tune led to 20 out of 30 of the songs in the game.