THIS MONTH Jeroen Paul Thesseling

Armed with a fretless seven-string Warwick bass, the Dutch musician Jeroen Paul Thesseling has decades of experience with the death metal bands Obscura and Pestilence, as well as his own solo albums. He began his musical endeavors as a violinist before picking up the bass at the age of 16. From there, he studied at music college in the Netherlands, and joined Pestilence, with whom he made his first recordings.

Thesseling’s parents were big fans of baroque music, which the bassist credits as an influence on his understanding of harmony, chord structure and counterpoint. He also studied jazz bass, and continued to explore the world between the frets. Indeed, those frets were soon obsolete: He switched to fretless in order to explore different tone systems.

Thesseling constantly