The Great Southern Brainfart's Do de Leaumont has issued an interview with award winning metal guitarist JAKE DREYER. An excerpt follows:

Q: Jake, do remember the moment you knew you wanted to be a guitar player?

A: "There was so much music in my house. My Dad used to play guitar but he never played in a band or anything. At this point in my life, MTV was still playing music and it was all the dying hair metal bands that were still getting airplay. I would see all the big productions in those videos and was just so drawn to the guitars. It wasn’t until I was 8 years old that I took a guitar lesson and wanted to do it seriously. The teacher I had would show me a lot of the theory stuff but at that point I just wanted to play songs so I took off a year and then went back when I was 10 and had a better attitude towards learning what my teacher wanted to teach me. From there it was just full on that I wanted to do it. When I was 14 and I heard YNGWIE MALMSTEEN I knew I wanted to do this. I figured out that those guys got good by not having girlfriends and just locking yourself in your room and practicing for hours so that’s what I did [laughs]."

Q: How would you describe the type of music you play? It seems to really cover a few different genres all at once.

A: "I guess I would just say that it’s progressive metal with some neo-classical influence. When it came time to do this album, I knew that I wanted to have three distinct tracks. If you listen to a record that has the same songs over and over again and it’s all the same genre for 10 tracks, no matter how awesome it may be it can get stale after a while. This album just taps into a lot of different metal genres out there but doesn’t go so deep into one genre that you could pin it as say a power metal genre or a thrash metal genre. If you play the same style over and over again there’s only one emotion that it taps into. My favorite albums are the ones that have different genres in there where the music just takes you on a journey."

Q: I grew up in a time where guitar players such as STEVE VAI, JOE SATRIANI, BLUES SARACENO and PAUL GILBERT were forging a genre all their own. Do you think this generation is missing out on this kind of guitar shredding?

A: "Yeah, in a way. I think there are guys still coming out. When I first started playing and got into the Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen stuff I was about 14 and that’s about right when YouTube came about. I would just out of curiosity type in those guy’s names and a video of another 14 year old kid playing their stuff would come up. There are a lot of others tapping into it but I don’t think we’ve had any guitarists in this generation that have the same effect as guitarists like Becker did in his time. In the 80’s it was such a fresh new thing and right now it’s already been done so it might not be as much of a thrill factor. These days JEFF LOOMIS is one of the best in the metal genre. When his solo album came out in 2008, that was the same thing to me as if it would’ve been hearing the first CACAPHONY release or the first RACER X release back when they came out. I think there are more “guitar gods” coming out but there’s definitely a lot more older guys doing it. Back in the day I’m sure it was just killer hearing some of these guys who were like you’re own age, 16 years old, making those records."

Read the full interview at this location.

Dreyer is currently featured on the home page of Ultimate-Guitar.tv. In this video lesson, Jake shows in detail how to play each guitar part of the song 'Harmony Of The Sphere', from his In The Shadows of Madness EP. Check out the lesson at this location.

Dreyer has released his debut solo EP, In the Shadows Of Madness, showcasing his many years of study under such masters as David "The Shred Demon" Shankle (DSG, ex-MANOWAR), Chris Broderick (MEGADETH, ex-JAG PANZER, NEVERMORE) and Rusty Cooley (OUTWORLD).

The three song EP was released in April of 2011 and is available now on ITunes and Amazon.

Currently, Dreyer is living in Los Angeles and attending Musicians Institute, where he is enrolled in the Bachelor's Degree program for Music Performance and writing songs for his next full length album.