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Artist News: Suspyre Announce New Drummer

Posted on Sunday, September 02 @ 22:36:26 UTC by nightowl

Suspyre, a progressive metal band from New Jersey, would like to announce their new drummer, Jeff Willet.

Jeff Willet has been playing drums since middle school. He stayed in the school band all throughout high school, and gained a lot from playing in the Rolling Thunder Drum Line while there. Besides the drum line, Jeff draws his influences from such drummers as Danny Carey, Sean Reinert, Jason Rullo, Thomas Haake, Mike Portnoy, Marco Minneman, Gavin Harrison, and Virgil Donati. Jeff played in a band right from the start of his drumming career, but during high school was when it really started picking up. His prog/rock band at the time, Ellipse, was playing at a local coffee house called The Common Grounds. From this came many more opportunities and he then joined another prog band, Awakenings. From there, he joined up with the technical death metal/"grindcore" band Aborted Existence, and recorded 2 CDs and played many shows.



Jeff has also played with guitar shred-master Chris Gordon and keyboardist Joe Trainor for a few shows varying in styles from prog rock to instrumental guitar shred metal to funk/fusion/jazz. He recently attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, and is teaching at French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts during the summer of 2007. The following semesters will be spent at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, PA, where he will study Music Recording Technology.

Jeff says, "This is the type of band I've been looking to be in for awhile now, and it's an honor to play with such talented and knowledgeable musicians. At the same time, as hard and demanding as the music is, it?s still very fun and exciting to play."

Jeff exclusively uses TAMA Starclassic Performer EFX Drums, SABIAN Cymbals, DW Pedals, and is endorsed by GRINDSTIX. He is featured on www.SickDrummer.com as well as www.Grindstix.com.

Gregg Rossetti, co-founder of Suspyre, says, "We are all very excited to have Jeff as our drummer. He's an incredible musician and his talents will show through Suspyre's music."

Suspyre is currently working on their 3rd album, and will be touring the U.S. East Coast starting in December.

[Source: Suspyre]

Posted in Band News (tours, comings/goings, etc)