Gene Hoglan

Gene Hoglan — born in the United States on 31 August 1967 — is one of the most sought-after drummers in extreme metal, known in that world by the nickname "The Atomic Clock". The nickname describes exactly his main characteristic: absolute precision at very high speeds, with no drift in tempo and no metronome. In a genre where drumming is usually measured by quickness, he is measured by exactness. His contribution, however, is compositional. Hoglan writes drum parts as arrangements, not as accompaniment: he builds patterns that answer the riffs on the offbeat, changes rhythmic figure within the bar and uses snare and cymbals to mark the structure of the song rather than merely holding it up. That is how he worked in Death, on Individual Thought Patterns (1993) and Symbolic (1995), the two albums on which Chuck Schuldiner went furthest in the progressive direction. Before that he was already an established name through Dark Angel, the Los Angeles thrash band, and afterwards he passed through Strapping Young Lad, Testament, Dethklok and Devin Townsend, among many others — a record that crosses almost every strand of American heavy metal of the last four decades.