Shawn Loeffler by   on @YellMagazine

Monte Pittman has played alongside Madonna since 2000, shortly after he began instructing her on guitar. I can only assume that he also taught her the main riff to Pantera’s “New Level,” which she used in her live performance of “Hung Up” back in 2009. If you’re not familiar, the riff starts at 4:30 in the video player below:

Pittman has also played with Prong and he’s about to release his third full-length solo album, The Power of Three. Honestly, I’ve never heard of the guy, since I don’t usually pay attention to pop guitarists — who does, right? But now that I have heard of him and heard him, I’m going to start paying attention to him. This guy is worth your time. The man is a veritable guitar virtuoso with a leaning toward thrash metal and ’70s-era metal.

The Power of Three won’t be released until January 21, 2014, but you can buy the album’s first single, “Before the Mourning Son,” on iTunes. Check the track out at itunes.apple.com (U.S. link). Pittman is also working on the video for the same track, and if you watched the video at the very top of this article, then you saw the teaser trailer for it — impressive, ain’t it?

Before letting you go off to YouTube land to explore Monte Pittman on your own, you might be interested to know that his third album, A Dark Horse, was a return to his heavy metal roots and produced by Flemming Rasmussen — yeah, the same guy who produced Metallica’s Master of Puppets. OK, now clear your schedule for some time on YouTube with Pittman.

The Power of Three track listing:

1. A Dark Horse
2. Delusions of Grandeur
3. Everything’s Undone
4. Blood Hungry Thirst
5. On My Mind
6. Away from Here
7. Before the Mourning Son
8. End of the World
9. Missing
10. All Is Fair in Love and War

Monte Pittman live show:

12/07 West Hollywood, CA – The Whisky

Keep up with Monte Pittman on Facebook.

Rock Hard \m/

  • IB

    he’s pretty badass, while you wait for “The Power of Three”, definitely check out this previous solo albums 😉

    • Evil Argento here… the guy has blown me away. How did you first come about this guy?

      • IB

        I love Madonna’s live shows, so when I watched one of her tour DVDs, he caught my attention.

        • Cool. We pretty much cover heavy metal exclusively here at Yell!, but I would never try to restrict anyone’s, let alone my own, musical spectrum to one genre. Loving music doesn’t mean loving all music, but it should mean loving a variety of genres. Having said that, the only pop artist whose guitarists I ever paid attention to was Michael Jackson, starting when I learned EVH did the solo on “Beat It.” MJ, by the way, was my first concert. As un-metal as it sounds, I also put some Madonna vinyl on the turntable a couple weeks back.

          • IB

            VERY cool!! I don’t restrict myself to specific genres of music, as long as the music is GOOD, then it’s all good!

            Madonna isn’t exactly known for having guitar solos in her songs, however she has a bunch of songs based on acoustic guitar (check her album “Music”) and probably her most acclaimed album “Ray of Light” has a dozen of guitar layers.

            As long as her live shows go, Monte has certainly added a rock vibe when the set list allows it so. He did this crazy solo for “Burning Up” in the 2004 Re-Invention Tour (starts at 2:20) https://youtu.be/tMsW6-LQV3A?t=2m20s

    • Hello… and now it’s time for our new interview with Monte – https://www.yellmagazine.com/monte-pittman-interview/76938/

  • Jeanine Politte

    Evil – You’re no longer a Montster virgin – glad you joined us, Monte is amazing!!!

  • Courtney Barge

    Monte ROCKS! Great write up- more people need to discover his talent.