Synyster Gates


Avenged Sevenfold
Floyd Rose Original
http://www.avengedsevenfold.com

 Synyster Gates was born Brian Elwin Haner, Jr. in Huntington Beach, California on July 7th, 1981. He was born to Brian Haner, Sr and Jan Gera, with whom they had one other child, Brent. They split when he was younger and his father remarried Suzy Haner, and had one child with her, McKenna, younger than Brian. His mother has a child from her second marriage, named Johnny. He's played guitar since he was young, when he picked up a guitar and started to try and learn Jimmy Page's solos, ignoring his father's warnings. His father is a studio musician, working for bands such as Frank Zappa's. He went to Music Institute of Technology, was accepted into the guitar program, but he dropped out when The Rev recruited him to play lead guitar in Avenged Sevenfold. His first band was with The Rev and two members of Ballistico and the former bassist of Avenged Sevenfold, Justin Sane (not to be confused with Anti-Flag's Justin Sane), called Pinkly Smooth, which he refers to as "Goblin metal with Danny Elfman influences," and they put out a six-song album called Unfortunate Snort before disbanding so that the two members could focus on Avenged Sevenfold. He won Metal Hammer's "Young Shredder of the Year" award in 2006, and "Guitarist of the Year" from Total Guitar in the same year of 2006.