Ian Jekelis is an American guitarist from Los Angeles, California. He began playing guitar at the young age of 12, starting off learning classic rock and metal songs from his favorite artists at the time, Van Halen, Scorpions, Black Sabbath/Ozzy and Iron Maiden. Later venturing into heavier and more extreme music and discovering “shred guitar”. Artists like Jeff Loomis, Marty Friedman, Paul Gilbert and Yngwie Malmsteen greatly influenced his playing style and paved his way to begin his live touring career. After playing his first shows at age 16 with local progressive metal band ‘Artisan’, he quickly moved on to joining Los Angeles death metal band ‘Abysmal Dawn’ and toured around the US. Later he joined the American black metal band ‘Abigail Williams’ and traveled across the world; touring Europe, Australia and North America. After a few years of a musical hiatus, he returned to the world of death metal and joined the legendary Belgian death metal band Aborted in 2015; where he continues to write, record and tour. Aborted’s most recent album ‘ManiaCult’ was released in 2021.
Ian first met Chris Delia in 2016 and over the years worked tirelessly with him to help design and create the first Valyrian V prototype. Ian says “we spent countless hours video chatting back and forth about all of the problems I had with all of the V shaped guitars I’ve owned and toured with over the years. What we ended up with fixed every single problem I had, and is without a doubt the best V guitar on the market.”
———————————————————————————-
Find out more at the following links:
“I hate sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere”
– Ian Jekelis 2021
