Shredders in your hood?

[element0s]

One of our members @ChrisX made a topic talking about how many people out there were able to put together a virtuoso level of picking technique and I figured it might be fun to shed some light on some hot but [relatively] unknown players in our respective cities/towns/regions who can can really scorch.

We have a pretty good assortment of high-level players in the Vancouver area a well as my native Edmonton, AB region too.

Some of the hottest players in Vancouver are the guys from Archspire, a tech-death band of jazz-program dudes who are out there touring the world and work teaching gigs when they’re home. They have three great guitarists, Tobi Morelli, Dean Lamb and Jared Smith. They are Code-aware.

From Calgary, AB is Sacha Laskow. Possibly the best metal guitarist in Canada. Very creative lead work that owes much to Steve Vai and can bust a shred picking nut no sweat. His band Divinity was one of the first Albertan bands to sign with a larger metal label, Nuclear Blast and they toured and did two records in the late 2000’s before he left. He mainly focuses on studio and solo work.

From Edmonton, my homies from the band Striker. Classic 80’s styled metal done the new way. I went to music school with these guys. They’ve had about 4 or 5 really skilled guitarists through their ranks, including their singer Dan Cleary who writes lots of the music. The current guitarists are Chris Segger and Tim Brown, but their original guitarist Ian Sandercock is also worth noting. All of these guitarists (and the rest of the band members) has known each other since grade school and grew up jamming and playing in bands with each other.

Old stuff (feat. Ian + Chris)

New Stuff (feat. Tim + Chris)

Eli Slamang is a little younger than me from Vancouver and he’s got a couple bands on the go, but his most notable achievement so far is joining Marty Friedman onstage to trade solos last year.

Lastly we have two guys from the “Old Guard” of Vancouver who are a pair of blazers. Blake Rurik and Raj Krishna grew up playing guitar together and told me that they were always trying to one-up each other’s playing by learning Malmsteen or Gilbert licks. Both are picking maestros. Here’s some live footage, I was at this particular gig and they killed.

There are a ton more I could name but I’d like to hear from some of the other members here!

[paulemile]

Check out Dan Mongrain from Trois-Rivières, Qc:

He’s probably more well-known now that he is in Voivod. They opened for Judas Priest a few years ago, infortunately I wasn’t familiar with them and only saw the last song from their set.

[element0s]

Yeah he rules, I saw his old band Martyr in like 2007 or 2008 at this tiny metal bar in Edmonton. Incredible player. I just heard from my guitar teacher that he was playing in Voivod a couple weeks ago. That’s a good gig for him!

[aliensporebomb]

The guy I always thought would become a star was Greg Herzenach out of Minneapolis/St. Paul who was in a lot of bands like The Outsiders (five piece fusion band comprised out of all the winners of the Knut Koupee ‘best guitarist, best bassist, best keyboardist etc’ awards). The Speed Kings (super fast heavy metal), Life After Dark (AOR band that tried to sound just like the record except Greg would slip in a Holdsworth solo in a Kansas song etc).

He could flatpick like McLauighlin or DiMeola, legato like Holdsworth, sweep and do everything. He went to LA and in a way he went from being a big fish in a small tank to a regular fish in a huge tank. He ended up playing on Peter Himmelman albums on CBS Records and didn’t end up doing any of the crazy stuff he did back in the day.

Later he came back to the Twin Cities to be with his wife and kid and was doing jingles for a living and played in occasional projects. He did a surf guitar meets techno project on myspace years ago.

Here’s a solo acoustic piece he did 3 years ago - still sounds great to me but not the same as the legato/picked madness on electric of old. To me it’s a crime he only has 9 subscribers.