Marc Okubo

Marc Okubo — American guitarist — is the founder of Veil of Maya and part of Falling in Reverse. His reputation comes from progressive metal. Veil of Maya, the band he put together in Chicago, is one of the references of djent — a subgenre defined by riffs of extreme syncopation in irregular metres, guitars in very low tunings and a rhythmic writing that favours displacement over constant pulse. Playing that demands millimetric precision: any imprecision between guitar and drums undoes the effect. Bringing that vocabulary to Falling in Reverse produces an improbable meeting. Ronnie Radke's band combines metalcore, rap, electronic pop and ballad within the same tracks, with changes of register that come without preparation — a repertoire of the opposite logic to progressive metal, where the structure is the content itself. Okubo moves between the two contexts, and his presence is part of the direction Falling in Reverse has taken in recent years: tracks with an increasingly heavy instrumental base, even when combined with pop elements no djent band would accept.