Gamma Ray's Kai Hansen chooses Animals As Leaders as his prog heroes

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The Gamma Ray and ex-Helloween guitarist discovered the next level with Animals As Leaders

A press shot of animals as leaders

“Rush and Genesis have always been favourites of mine – you couldn’t get away from albums like Foxtrot or Selling England By The Pound in the 70s. I really loved Dream Theater’s first album [When Dream And Day Unite] as well, because I thought the singer [Charlie Dominici] sounded like Geddy Lee, but it was my 17-year-old son Tim who introduced me to the modern progressive bands. He also plays a guitar solo on Follow The Sun on my new album.

Tim played me Animals As Leaders and I was like, ‘What the hell?’ They’re probably the next level of guitar playing. I’ve not seen them in concert yet but it’s something I’m planning to do because I want to see those guys play their songs live. What they do, along with bands like Dillinger Escape Plan, Gojira and The Contortionist, is so different from the classic blues and rock’n’roll-influenced type of metal that I play. There’s always been progression within metal, but there are now guitarists doing very intricate solos, things that years ago people maybe would have said were impossible to play.

I thought that after [Yngwie] Malmsteen and the like, everything had been done, but it seems like technical skills are getting higher. Maybe this is because the bands that today’s young guitarists are learning from are on another level compared to our teachers, like Jimi Hendrix and the like. You’ve only got 12 tones on a guitar so what more can you do? All the classical chord progressions have been done, so it’s about putting them together in a different way rhythmically.

It’s great that you can just go online and find a million people playing like hell and breaking things down so you can see exactly what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. When I’m sitting at home, you’ll often find me trying to recreate cool riffs or licks that I’ve heard. I’m always wondering how these things go. I got into some of Andy James’ stuff [Andy James Guitar Academy/ex-Sacred Mother Tongue] and I looked into how the guy was playing some of this shit, but I wouldn’t dare put on shoes that don’t fit me.”

Kai Hansen’s solo album XXX – Three Decades In Metal is out now through earMUSIC. See facebook.com/kaihansenofficial.

How Animals As Leaders are challenging the foundations of prog

Natasha Scharf
Natasha Scharf
Deputy Editor, Prog

Contributing to Prog since the very first issue, writer and broadcaster Natasha Scharf was the magazine’s News Editor before she took up her current role of Deputy Editor, and has interviewed some of the best-known acts in the progressive music world from ELP, Yes and Marillion to Nightwish, Dream Theater and TesseracT. Starting young, she set up her first music fanzine in the late 80s and became a regular contributor to local newspapers and magazines over the next decade. The 00s would see her running the dark music magazine, Meltdown, as well as contributing to Metal Hammer, Classic Rock, Terrorizer and Artrocker. Author of music subculture books The Art Of Gothic and Worldwide Gothic, she’s since written album sleeve notes for Cherry Red, and also co-wrote Tarja Turunen’s memoirs, Singing In My Blood. Beyond the written word, Natasha has spent several decades as a club DJ, spinning tunes at aftershow parties for Metallica, Motörhead and Nine Inch Nails. She’s currently the only member of the Prog team to have appeared on the magazine’s cover.