“He was already in Animals As Leaders – but there we were, playing the Beatles in a bar. I’d be like, ‘What the hell is happening?’” Joshua De La Victoria has gone from prog awakening to one of the genre’s brightest guitar talents

Joshua De La Victoria.

Joshua De La Victoria isn’t like most other prog guitarists. His feet may be planted on the borderline where math rock meets fusion’s colorgasm spectrum, but it’s his classic rock upbringing – via his parents’ love for Tom Petty and Bon Jovi – that shaped his tastes.

“Tonally, I love the classic rock stuff,” De La Victoria says. “Especially edge-of-breakup tones like a Vox AC30 kind of thing, or any kind of Friedmann amp that isn’t super metal.”