New Zealand born metal guitarist Christian Humphreys first picked up a guitar when he was 15 years old. The quick learning and hugely talented axeman is now a member of one of New Zealand’s most prominent metal bands The Mark of Man and a former member of Dayone, Sommerset and 8 Foot Sativa.
Humphreys is from a family full of musicians and music lovers. His Grandmother, Grandfather, Father and Uncle all played professionally and semi-professionally. As a child, Humphreys would attend concerts with his parents and was always fascinated by the musicians on stage. The definitive moment for Humphreys wanting to play guitar was when he saw Steve Vai’s “The Audience is Listening” from “Passion and Warfare” on his local Music Television station. That consequently led to Humphreys buying the album and becoming completely obsessed with it. To this day, Vai is still Humphreys favorite player and ‘PAW’ his favorite guitar album of all time.
Being heavily influenced by Vai, Humphreys started out wanting to play very technical, shred style guitar and tried to learn along those lines. Humphreys other influences include anything from Steely Dan, Michael Franks to Massive Attack, Failure and Deftones to Meshuggah or Decapitated. He finds elements in most music that he can enjoy or be inspired by.
When Humphreys arrived at a level where he was able to play in bands that were getting shows he had become very interested in the punk/hardcore scene of the 90’s. This style of playing led Humphreys away from wanting to play technical leads and he began to learn more about songwriting and structure. Humphreys played power chords in 4/4 time for many a year using very little lead. It has only been in the past four or five years that Humphreys has rediscovered lead playing and shredding techniques, and it is proving to be successful with the latest material.
Some of Humphreys career highlights to date include performing at the Auckland Big Day Out and at the Australasian Silver Scroll Awards with 8 Foot Sativa and more recently, headlining with Blindspott at a sold out Homegrown festival in Wellington. Humphreys has also played on the same bill as Meshuggah and Devin Townsend.