The ESP Guitar Company

ESP Guitars is happy to welcome the newest member of our artist endorsement roster: Aaron Deal, bass player of Darkest Hour, will now be rocking his ESP Vintage-4 basses.

“We are so stoked to have Aaron in the ESP family,” says Chris Cannella, ESP director of artist relations. “He is a great player who has the respect of many in the metal community. We welcome him, and look forward to seeing what he’ll do with his ESP basses!”

“The first thing I noticed about my ESP Vintage-4 is that the feel and build quality are excellent. All of the details are right. The fretwork is amazing. I immediately felt comfortable playing it. We’re currently on the Mayhem Tour, and temperatures and humidity are all over the place. It will be 60 degrees in one city, and over 100 the next day. It’s the most brutal possible conditions for an instrument, and most basses don’t respond well to severe environmental changes like that. But I’ve had no problems at all with my ESP.”

Aaron's new weapons of bass destruction: two ESP Vintage-4 basses he's using on the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Tour. 

Aaron Deal has been a bass player for over 25 years, and cites bassists such as Metallica’s Cliff Burton, The Beatles’ Paul McCartney, Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, and Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler as influences. He joined Washington D.C.-based melodic death metal band Darkest Hour three years ago, and in addition to multiple tours and festivals, wrote and performed on the band’s newest album, the selftitled Darkest Hour, being released on August 5 (Sumerian Records).

“One thing I really like about the Vintage-4 is having the J-type bridge pickup and the P-style neck pickup. It’s a really cool sound for Darkest Hour, because I can get that growl along with the attack and clarity. The tactile part of playing this bass feels great. It feels like home.”