Band / Niels van Lier

Hello, Niels van Lier here!

I play electric guitar in Burnout Messiah. I started playing at the age of 14, because I thought Grunge and Metal were awsome. My alltime hero is Dimebag Darrell from Pantera/Damageplan, may he R.I.P. Besides grunge and metal I was introduced to a lot of older music as Jimi Hendrix, Little Feat, The Band, the Allman Brothers band and the Stones by a friend of mine. As a consequence of this I started playing more bluesier.

Further down the road I went deeper into metal to discover Slayer, Metallica (up until the Black album), Sepultura, Carcass, Machine head (first album), Sevendust and Stuck Mojo. Later on I got inspired by “guitar heroes” in the likes of Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Yngwie Malmsteen, Vinnie Moore, Paul Gilbert, John Petrucci and Gary Moore.

Currently I’m a student of the conservatory of Utrecht, studying jazz guitar. This brought me into contact with a lot of jazz, fusion and latin jazz. In these genres I dig Wes Montgomery, Frank Gambale, Scott Henderson, Steve Masakowski, Jesse van Ruller, Martijn van Iterson, Tuck Anderson en Allan Holdsworth the most. I can also really appreciate Pat Martino, John Scofield, Leonardo Amuedo and Pat Metheny very much. THE discovery for me the past year has definitely been Andy Timmons, the guy is truely amazing!

My gear consists of a Gibson jazz guitar, an Ibanez for the shred work, A Dean Dimebag Darrell model tuned down to B and a Squier Stratocaster that I pimped up to my taste. Furthermore I use Mesa Boogie amplification, a Boss GX700, a Rocktron Intellifex, an Ibanez Tubescreamer and a Behringer Noise Reducer. For Jazz I use a Yamaha G100/212 II amplifier.

Besides my work for Burnout Messiah I play in Monsieur Cannibale, Monkey Stuff and KCB and different projects and I teach guitar.