Andy Sneap

Andy Sneap
Andy Sneap in 2007
Background information
Born	(1969-07-18) 18 July 1969 Derbyshire, England
Genres	Heavy metal, thrash metal
Occupation(s)	Musician, songwriter, sound engineer, record producer, guitarist
Instruments	guitar
Years active	1988, present
Associated acts	Hell, Sabbat

Andy Sneap (born 18 July 1969) is a British musician, songwriter, guitar player and record producer, best known as a successful Grammy winning producer with over 100 albums produced at his Backstage Recording studios in rural Derbyshire and as guitar player of British Heavy metal band Hell.^[1] He is one of the most active and successful music producers in the metal music genre and has worked with bands such as Accept, Saxon, Opeth, Amon Amarth, Arch Enemy, Exodus, Megadeth, Kataklysm, Kreator, Nevermore and Testament^[2][3][4]

Biography

Andy was born on 18 July 1969 in Belper, Derbyshire, England. He got his first guitar and amplifier from his parents at age 12 as a Christmas present. He started learning guitar with founding Hell member, Dave Halliday, who had a huge affect on Andy and left him all the rights to all his songs and equipment, in his will following his death.^[5] Andy joined a British heavy metal band called Hydra as the second guitarist when he was 15 years old. But two weeks later, the original guitarist and drummer quit, Simon Negus joined them and the band's name changed to Sabbat.^[6]

After disbanding Hydra and forming a new band, they chose Sabbat as the new name, which came from a book on witchcraft.^[6] After one year of rehearsing, they recorded a four-track demo tape, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten. Andy distributed the demo tape to many record companies, but on listening, Berlin-based recording company Noise Records showed interest and asked for more material. In 1987, Noise Records offered the band a recording contract, but the contract could not be signed until Sneap turned 18 years old in July 1987. So they made a plan to start recording the band's first full studio album, History of a Time to Come. Andy wrote all the music while Martin Walkyier was responsible for the lyrics.^[7] Sabbat released the album on 20 April 1988 via Noise Records, which received positive attention from journalists and fans alike.

In January 1989 Andy and the other band members entered Sky Trak Studio in Berlin to start recording their second album, Dreamweaver, which was a concept album based on the 1983 book by Brian Bates – The Way of Wyrd: Tales of an Anglo-Saxon Sorcerer. Andy wrote almost all of the music except three songs, which Simon Jones also wrote with Andy. The album has come to be regarded as a classic of the thrash metal genre, which reflects Andy's predilection at that time for increasingly lengthy and progressively technical thrash metal songs.

Discography

As a band member

Selected production

External links

• Official website

References