Five Real Instruments That Make The 'Fury Road' Flame-Throwing Guitar Look Like A Toy

21 May 2015 | 12:32 pm | Mitch Knox

Yo, Coma the Doof Warrior, we're real happy for you, but...

It's only been a week since George Miller's franchise-reviving Mad Max: Fury Road hit cinema screens, but it's already being hailed as one of the greatest action films — if not greatest films in general — of our time, with good reason.

Between Tom Hardy's strong'n'silent post-apocalyptic protagonist, the army of fiery, fleshed-out female characters led by Charlize Theron, bald Nicholas Hoult, the thrills and spills of the film's overarching pursuit and the general insanity of the dust-blown wasteland of the Millerverse, there's arguably something for everyone in Mad Max: Fury Road — and, almost universally, the something that everyone is talking about is world's greatest side character Coma, The Doof Warrior, a flamethrower-guitar-wielding member of Immortan Joe's freakish war force, played by none other than acclaimed Aussie muso iOTA.

Nikki Sixx has done this for years.

Now, we're not here to rain on Coma's parade or anything — his scenes come dangerously close to stealing the show in places, so we're definitely on board — but it's worth remembering that the truth is very regularly much stranger than fiction, and pre-apocalyptic human society has done a perfectly adequate job of concocting nightmare contraptions to pass off as musical instruments...

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pyrophone

Pic: Wikipedia

Also known as a "fire organ" or "explosion organ" (or calliope), the propane-powered pyrophone was invented in the 19th century by Georges Frederic Eugene Kastner, and brings the worlds of classical music and pyromania together at last. Utilising a series of glass combustion chambers into which flammable gas is pumped, standard pyrophones come across as a kind of ultra-fancy bunsen burner. However, their basic design is capable of great madness; behold the Pyrophone Juggernaut, a viking ship-style behemoth measuring 10 metres by 12 metres, "fuelled by fire and made from stainless steel, copper and aluminium industrial salvage". It was created by artist Steve Langton, who brought it to Australia in 2009, and ramps up the basic premise behind the classical pyrophone to brilliantly ostentatious levels.

Basically, if Mad Max met Waterworld, you'd get this:

zeusaphone

Man, this one has everything: a design harnessing the raw and terrifying power of Mother Nature and a sweet, sweet pun built right into the name. Essentially modified Tesla coils that can modulate their spark output to create musical tones, Zeusaphones (aka the equally delightful "Thoramin") are not only more aurally pleasing than most makeshift instruments, but they're visually stunning contraptions, relying on raw electricity for their sound data and creating a hell of a lightning show along with their synthesiser-like tones. The Zeusaphone received its name following a public demonstration of the device by electrical engineering student Steve Ward at a science-fiction convention in Illinois back in 2007 - so what the Zeusaphone lacks in age, it more than makes up for in being ridiculously awesome.

pikasso

This instrument is so fucking unnecessary. Nobody needs four necks on a single guitar. Nobody needs 42 strings, for that matter. And nobody needs to be worried about said strings going in different goddamn directions all over the place. Absolutely everything about the design of this guitar is criminal, and yet for some reason it has ascended to cultishly revered heights since its creation in 1984.

The Pikasso, named for artist Pablo Picasso and his similarly warped perspective on aesthetic value, was created by Manzer Guitars for renowned stringsmith Pat Metheny, who was obviously bored with being physically comfortable while playing his instrument, because there is no other feasible reason why you would want to be navigating this many strings. What it does have going for it is the fact that it looks hella difficult, so you're sure to earn brief cred for the technicality, right before everyone starts questioning why you bothered to learn it in the first place. Listen to its grating sounds below.

the great stalacpipe organ

Pic: Wikipedia

Pipe organs - the beastly, complex creations that they are - are unquestionably impressive demonstrations of the limitless potential of the human imagination. But it turns out Mother Nature beat us to the idea millions of years ago; all we needed to do was provide the keyboard.

The Great Stalacpipe Organ was invented in 1956 by the impossibly named Leland W Sprinkle, and installed over three years in the depths of the Luray Caverns, Virginia. The instrument translates the sounds of rubber mallets being tapped against 37 select stalactites within the caves to produce sounds of distinct tone and pitch, because the arrogance of man knows no bounds.

sea organ

Pic: Wikipedia

Sometime just over 10 years ago, the experimental creatives of Zadar, Croatia, got together to brainstorm a new and crazy instrument and came away with "Fuck it, let's just use the sea."

Created by architect Nikola Basic and opened to the public on 15 April 2005, the Sea Organ Of Zadar is a massive piece of architecture that creates music from the waves of Poseidon himself, using a series of tubes hidden away beneath the coastline's large marble steps. At night, coloured lights add to the vibe, creating a pretty neat approximation of what a beach party soundtracked by Enya would probably be like.

See? People aren't giving the real world enough credit. There's more than enough musical madness floating around as it is, and you don't even need to be shredding while harnessed to a rolling death-wagon to tap into it.