“my setup is a digital cave.”
From a classical guitar and a cheap Strat copy to a low-tuned setup built around Solar, Neural DSP and Superior Drummer 3, Libyan guitarist Jonathan Steel talks about the tools behind his sound and the real-life weight that feeds it.
When Jonathan Steel was about 10, metal came into his life through family. A cousin was already deep into it and pulled him in. By 16, he had started playing on a classical guitar. Two years later came his first electric, a Chinese Strat copy. It was a modest start, but the direction was already clear: “Listening to metal music made me dream about playing guitar,” he says. “I believe we all did once in our lifetime. Some went all in, some just forgot about it.”
He did not forget. These days, his guitar lineup includes a Solar Guitars AB1.7FRBOP+, a Gibson Supreme, an Ibanez RG and a Yamaha Pacifica. The sound sits in slow and heavy territory. Steel describes it through suffocating riffs, cavernous growls and bleak melody, shaped by names like Keith Merrow, Paradise Lost and early Anathema.
That weight also comes from how he works. His current setup is built as what he calls “a digital cave”. Guitars run through a Universal Audio interface, with Neural DSP Quad Cortex, a Hotone Soul Press II expression pedal and Neural DSP plugins inside Cubase 15 Pro. Drums come from Toontrack Superior Drummer 3. He uses heavy string gauges, 10-60 and sometimes 10-72 on his Solar 7-string, keeping everything tuned low for the kind of pressure his music needs.
“Right now my setup is a digital cave,” he says. “These are the studio tools I swear by for crushing clarity and atmosphere.”
Steel handles the project largely on his own and brings in friends when needed for guest solos, bass or vocals. The drums are programmed for a practical reason as much as a musical one.
“I’m managing my own band,” he says. “I call friends for collab, such as guest solos, bass guitar and vocals. We don’t have good drummers here, so I’m using Toontrack Superior Drummer 3.”
One of the key people in that process has been his friend and producer Sohail Alhjaj. Steel says meeting him pushed him beyond his limits, helped him finish his albums and guided him through the parts of recording and production he did not yet know well.
“Metal is a form of release. It’s where fatherhood, pressure, faith, doubt and real life collapse into slow, crushing sound.”
The gear is part of it, but it is not the whole story. For Steel, metal is a release. It is where real life ends up, without much distance between the two: “I don’t make metal music to follow a scene,” he says. “I make it as a form of release. It’s where fatherhood, pressure, faith, doubt and real life collapse into slow, crushing sound, and every riff I write has to feel honest enough that my son could one day hear it and know it came from something real.”
The setup matters, but only up to a point. What comes through more clearly is Steel’s need to make music that feels real, and heavy enough to carry some weight.
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