Although Jake Dreyer has been making waves as a major-league shred monster for years, it’s astonishing to remember that he’s only 26. When we catch up with the guitarist — an active member of both Iced Earth and Witherfall — he’s heavily promoting Witherfall’s new album, A Prelude to Sorrow. It’s a mixture of lightning-fast soloing and bone-crunching riffage interspersed with atmospheric acoustic interludes that picks up where the 2017’s Nocturnes and Requiems left off. Stylistically, Dreyer describes the band’s sound as progressive metal — a pretty fair description.
Given Dreyer’s prodigious talent, it’s somewhat reassuring to know he wasn’t a six-slingin’ ace from the moment he first picked up a guitar. “No, I worked my ass off,” he says. “I was kinda messing around, not totally committed, until I heard Yngwie Malmsteen when I was 14 — and something clicked. I became committed and played for hours every day.” His blue-collar work ethic is an inspiration to anyone striving to improve. “I play a minimum of four hours a day, every day. There has to be some major blockage in my schedule to stop me from playing. I don’t just sit around jamming; I have exercises I created to focus on areas of technique or to prep for live dates where there are some tricky runs to play. I always use a metronome and I’m always working on things to stretch myself.”
