My musical history:

I played piano when i was really young and got bored at about grade 5, so i gave that up. I tried spanish guitar for about 3 months, but also gave that up.

I started playing electric guitar in early 1996 (and probably drummed for the first time around then).

Drums:

I just messed around a tiny bit on the drums back then (i'd leap on the kit when the drummers i played with had breaks). I didn't really try playing them properly until 1998 when our band broke up, as the kit stayed with me as i'd paid for it to get the band started. Anyway it was disastrous, i gave up almost immediately after trying to play some of the slower drums on formulas fatal to the flesh, with absolutely no sucess (pretty obvious that faliure was the only outcome really haha). We then started Imperator at the mid / end of 1998.

Then i found i was capable of playing really really fast blastbeats (faster than the ones i do these days), so in 1999 i used to do a little grind side project with Rayner and some other guys in breaks at our Imperator rehearsals, with the aim of being as fast and as stupid as possible (which came totally naturally of course - particularly to Rayner .

Then when the Imperator drummer Justin left towards the end of 1999, i was the only choice for the drumseat if the band was to continue. So i started drumming properly at the end of 1999, and have done since really.

This 'being as fast and as ott as possible' mentality carried on until the 'Legions' session with Rayner having to tell me to slow the drumming right down in the studio, as some parts were so fast we couldn't play them effectively on guitar (ah to be young and naieve again!)

I took really small breaks off drums when Ben joined and Justin rejoined as i was concentrating on guitars at rehearsals.

After we did 'Legions...' and 'Worlds...' i was burnt out with drumming after rehearsing drums twice a week for 8 hours a time FOR 3 YEARS so once i finished the 'Worlds' session i put my sticks down for nearly a year.

We then took a break from the band for about a year while 'Worlds' was being released, only doing a few gigs with Ben on session drums, before i decided to move away for a while.

I bought a practice drum kit in early 2004 with the aim of just working on some aspects of my drumming i wasn't happy with, then Sean joined so we started rehearsing again. I did do about 6 months of solid playing on the practice kit, which i'm glad to say has improved my drumming a lot, which you'll see on album 3;)

Atm we are rehearsing every 5 days as this damn album has to be finished, in fact i just got back from rehearsal, which explains why i'm typing like a maniac here (still on an adrenaline rush!).

Guitar:

I practiced / played guitar as much as possible in the beginning (Normally 5+ hours a day) which helped me get good pretty quick. I played along to Slayer and Sepultura and went from there really. Since then i've played less and less, and now i don't play a whole lot, just a bit here and there. If i find there's a part i want to play but can't (for whatever technical reason) a few minutes of repeating it usually does the trick

I have periods where i play a lot and write, and then ones where i hardly play at all. Though i've found my alternate picking starts to go down the toilet if i don't practice regularly these days

I've found there's obvious limits to how technical something can be within the framework of my playing and the style of music we play, and i've got no desire to be a player obsessed with guitar techniques, tbh i find it dead boring. I'm more interested in creating something that has a feeling / meaning, rather than playing something with 25 notes a second that's technically amazing but lifeless. On 'Behind The Shadows..' there are parts where i play things which are simplistic but really strange and effective. To balance it out, there are also some of my most complex leads.

Anyway hope that's what you wanted to know hehe!