The Great Kat

When you are dealing with the ultimate female guitar shredder, a Heavy Metal mistress, the only thing you have to do is bow and obey. The Great Kat whips Yiannis Z. with her jawbreaking answers and speaks to Metal Temple about the past, present and future of Shred/Classical music. So, all of you submissive Metal slaves, worship her or die!!!!

By Yiannis Zervos

• April 20, 2008

Great Kat, first of all, thank you for accepting my request for an interview with Metal Temple.

Bow to your Metal Messiah, THE GREAT KAT, the ONLY Neo-Classical Guitar Shredder/Juilliard Graduate Violin Virtuoso-turned Guitar Goddess/ Top 10 Fastest Shredders of all Time (Guitar One Magazine) and The 100 Wildest Guitar Heroes (Classic Rock Magazine) in the world who is updating classical masterpieces through shred guitar!!!

Do you want to start from the beginning. What do you remember from your childhood years as Katherine Thomas back in Long Island? What was the first musical experience you remember?

Listening to Beethoven's Egmont at birth!!! After hearing that, I realized that my mission was to become a composer and musical revolutionary!!! I began Classical piano studies at 7 and at the age of 9, began Classical violin studies in New York.

With your classical education and all your years of violin training, in my mind looks like you spent all your time studying the magnificent composers of classical music. How hard was it for you to focus all your talent on violin? When did you realize you can play really fast?

The Great Kat's speed on the violin and guitar comes from practicing hours a day, torturing my fingers with mind-numbing stretching virtuoso runs, scales and solos and having phenomenal technique which I learned on the violin and applied to the guitar!!!

We all first saw The Great Kat with an electric guitar, shredding on some Beethoven's melody, while saying the famous phrase Worship Me Or Die! How did you decide to leave your violin and grab the Flying V guitar, and from the classical violin virtuoso you became the ultimate Heavy Metal guitar goddess?

After leaving Juilliard and realizing that Classical Music was dead, I decided to update the classical repertoire and picked up the electric guitar and immediately began transcribing brilliant Classical violin solos, such as Paganini, Vivaldi, Bazzini and more, to the guitar!!!! The Great Kat's Shred/Classical music was born!!!

In a way your Shred/Classical Metal managed to get, beautiful music scores, to the ears of the average metalhead. What do you think your old classical teachers would say about your Heavy Metal slip?

WAKE UP!!! The Great Kat's transformation from Juilliard violin virtuoso to shred guitar revolutionary is not a SLIP!!! This is a carefully planned mission to update Classical music for the masses and bring the world screaming into the future with complex, fast, brilliant, Classical genius!!!

Let's talk about The Great Kat's present now. If I am not mistaken your last studio release was Wagner's War. I know you're currently recording Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #3 and Beethoven's 5th Symphony for a new CD. What can you tell me about this?

The Great Kat has been recording and filming the upcoming new Shred CD/DVD! This ground-breaking CD and DVD will feature shredding virtuosity on The Flight Of The Bubble-Bee (at 300 BPM!), Paganini's Caprice #24 for Violin and guitar, Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #3 for 6 guitars, 3 violins and chamber orchestra, the most classical masterpiece ever - Beethoven's 5th Symphony for orchestra, band and shred guitar and Bach's The Art Of The Fugue!!!!

Besides the classical masters, who else influenced your music as far Metal goes?

Ozzy, JUDAS PRIEST, Hendrix.

You used to have a strong dominate stage image. Will your monumental, on stage, appearances continue? What is your opinion for bands like KISS and WASP that still provoke with their extreme shows?

The Queen Of Speed Great Kat's live show will blow you away with whipping, abusing, shredding on guitar and violin, Slaves bowing to their Mistress Kat, choir Of death, wild torture chambers!!!

That's the whole purpose art and music - to wake people up with extreme music and images and get them out of their lethargic, pathetic lives!

Do you have any free time? Do you have any hobbies, or you surf the internet at all?

The Great Kat is on a non-stop 24 hour a day mission to update Classical music and bring it to the world!!!Now step aside and Let me get back to work!!!!

How do you feel about people that download your music instead of buying your CDs? You think Internet and downloading is a way to increase your popularity by making your music accessible to more people? Or you think that your work is been 'stolen' in a way?

The Great Kat's job is to spread the genius of Shred/Classical to the entire world through the internet, live shows, CDs, DVDs and every possible medium there is to enforce a global society of geniuses!!!

Great Kat you have anything you want to say to your fans and to Metal Temple's readers?

To all Kat-possessed slaves, Kat fans and Metal Temple readers WAKE UP AND BOW TO YOUR METAL MESSIAH KAT! Now go to The Great Kat web site at www.GreatKat.Com

The Great Kat at greatkat@greatkat.com
Hotline: 631-549-7578
SHRED ON!

Great Kat thank you very much for your time, it was an honor.

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