Zanister Quotes

Originally the full band title was Joe Stump's Reign Of Terror. I wanted a title in the same vein as Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow or Yngwie J. Malmsteen's Rising Force. I thought Reign Of Terror sounded cool, very aggressive and fit the music well. 
Joe Stump

Well if you're a guitar virtuoso to compete in the market you have to be able to stand up to the other players in the genre. That means your playing skills, your compositions, the whole package. Plus you have to bring a little something different to the table. Great guitar playing doesn't mean much if you can't showcase it in a proper musical setting. 
Joe Stump

When you talk about somebody being a shredder, or shredding, it's got to do with the guitar - it's playing the guitar in an extremely advanced technical type of style and format. Speed is involved, so anyone that is shredding is playing very fast [laughing], but there is more to it than that. Ideally, it's supposed to still be music. It's just like a great violinist like Itzak Pearlman - you're playing things that are incredibly technically demanding that require great dedication to the instrument you're playing, and you're playing it at breakneck speeds. But it's also got to be musical. A lot of the shred guys tend to take themselves very, very seriously, but it [album title] is kind of like a tongue-in-cheek thing. Ever since I started naming my records that, I kind of have a responsibility - [laughing] like you gotta come up with a cool ass, tongue-in-cheek, funny name for each release. 
Joe Stump

Nobody that is huge. A couple of guys that studied with me have gone on to do things. Gus G. from Firewind was one of my students. He's starting to get a bit of press now; not necessarily so much for Firewind, but he's playing with Fredrik [Nordstr?m] - the guy that produced In Flames and Hammerfall - in Dream Evil. So it's nice to see somebody that's a good player getting some positive press. Rob Caggiano who plays in Anthrax now was one of my students. I haven't seen him play for quite a while, but when he was a kid and studying with me, he was a ripping, great, monster player, so I'm not surprised he's doing well. 
Joe Stump