Birth name James Adams Instruments Guitar, bass, Banjo Labels Candlelight | Occupation(s) Musician, songwriter Years active 1986 - present Name Jim (musician) | |
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Born December 21, 1967 (age 56)
USA ( 1967-12-21 ) Genres Thrash metal, speed metal, heavy metal, groove metal | ||
Jim Adams born (James Adams) is an American heavy metal guitarist. His is best known for being lead guitarist for thrash metal band Defiance. Joining the band in 1986, Adams quickly became an integral member of the band, co-writing much of their material and playing on all three of their LP's, Product of Society, Void Terra Firma and Beyond Recognition. During his time in Defiance Adams became known for having a wild stage prescense and a highly eccentric personality especially for a metal musician, often doing somewhat out there things such as wearing tie-die shirts on stage. He left the band briefly in 1992 to join the band Indica, but departed to rejoin Defiance. Defiance later evolved into Inner Threshold, which disbanded in the mid-1990s. Adams played in the cover band Fat Freddie's Cat during the late 1990s.
As of 2005 Defiance has reunited, and Adams has rejoined along with Steev Esquivel, Mike Kaufmann and Doug Harrington. Following Harrington's passing Adams is now Defiance's sole guitarist. He had a short lived role as lead guitarist in 2007 for the band Freeload, a more "feel-good" almost jam band oriented type group which also features former Vio-Lence drummer Perry Strickland.
In 2010, he joined Jono Bacon's free culture metal project Severed Fifth as lead guitarist. Severed Fifth released a full album length demo just months later in October titled "Nightmares by Design". The following year of 2011, the band returned to the same recording studio owned and operated by Juan Ortega that Defiance had recorded their final album The Prophecy_(album) in 2006-2009. Severed Fifth proceeded to record their first full length album entitled Liberate. Liberate was officially released on February 3, 2012 under the Creative Commons License, the album's content is available freely for non-commercial purposes. The mission statement of Severed Fifth is "Changing the Game". Which is in reference to the many reports, articles and stories, about the health of the music industry as a whole. The idealistic notion that the band projects is that they have an answer to save the industry for the sake of the musicians and listeners.
He is known for his unique, Holdsworth-esque lead style, prevalent in his utilization of fast legato shred.
His primary guitars in his Defiance days were Gibson Les Pauls modified with a blood splatter paint job and EMG pickups. He has also been seen using Jackson and Carvin DN612 (doubleneck) TL60 guitars and Dean USA V's Flying V.
He also works as a Systems Administrator, is married and has two children, a daughter and a son.