GUS G. BIOGRAPHY

GUS G.
Biography

Overview

Gus G. is a guitarist from Thessaloniki, the port city of northern Greece, born in 1980. He founded the power metal band Firewind, played guitar in Ozzy Osbourne's band from 2009 to 2017, and plays on Ozzy's 2010 album Scream.

He is known for pairing speed with lyrical melody, and in the early 2000s he was in so many bands at once that the Japanese music press called him the busiest guitarist in the world. Under his own name he has released five studio albums since 2014, some built around singers and one made entirely of guitar instrumentals. In 2026 he was announced as King Diamond's new guitarist.

His ties to Japan run deep. King Records has released every one of his solo albums there, two of them before the rest of the world, and his appearance at FULL METAL JAPAN 2026 in October 2026, with a Japan-only EP, Steel Burning Live, has been announced.

This site carries six records: his five solo studio albums and that EP. The records of Firewind and the other bands he has played in are on those bands' own pages.

From Thessaloniki to Boston: how Firewind began

He has traced his interest in the guitar to a record in his father's collection, Peter Frampton's live album Frampton Comes Alive!. His father, a teacher who sang Greek music at weddings at weekends, started him on a classical guitar; the electric came at fourteen.

At eighteen he went to Berklee College of Music in Boston on a scholarship, found the academic side was not for him and left within weeks, and took lessons from Joe Stump while he was in the city. In 1998 he recorded a ten-song demo, Nocturnal Symphony, with a singer and a drummer he knew, and called the project Firewind. The name came from an Uli Roth album; in 2002 he said it was a word he had always liked and a strong name for a band.

"The busiest guitarist in the world": the early 2000s

According to King Records' biography, he stepped onto the wider stage in 2001 as a member of the German melodic speed metal band Mystic Prophecy, and at the same time belonged to Nightrage and to Sweden's Dream Evil. That is where the nickname came from. He later left every other band to concentrate on Firewind, the band he leads.

His first trips to Japan date from those years: by his own account he came with Dream Evil in 2002 and 2003 and with Firewind in 2004. In the summer of 2005 he toured with Arch Enemy, including Ozzfest, as the stand-in for Christopher Amott, and, according to King Records, he plays on that band's album of the same year, Doomsday Machine.

In Ozzy Osbourne's band, 2009 to 2017

In the summer of 2009 an email from Ozzy's management invited him to audition; he was told later that someone had shown Ozzy a YouTube clip of him playing. His first show with the band was the closing ceremony of BlizzCon '09 at the Anaheim Convention Center on 22 August 2009, which was also drummer Tommy Clufetos's first.

The following year's album, Scream, was finished in the basement studio of Ozzy's house with producer Kevin Churko. His part, he has said, was to put guitars over songs that had already been recorded and to bring his own character to the solos. Its song "Let Me Hear You Scream" was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance at the 53rd Grammy Awards, and that October he played Tokyo International Forum on Ozzy's Japanese tour. He was back in Japan with Ozzy's band for Ozzfest Japan 2015 at Makuhari Messe that November.

In April 2017 Zakk Wylde's return to the band was announced, which ended Gus's eight years there. He has said that Sharon Osbourne rang him at home in Greece, in the middle of the night because of the time difference, so that he would not learn it online, and in 2018 he admitted it had also been something of a relief after years of waiting on plans that were never fixed far ahead.

The solo albums, 2014 to 2026

His first solo album, I Am the Fire, came out on Century Media Records in March 2014. He wrote all of it and gave each song its own guest: Mats Levén, Jeff Scott Soto and Steel Panther's Michael Starr among the singers, with David Ellefson and Billy Sheehan playing bass on the instrumentals. Many of them came through Jay Ruston, who mixed the record. Brand New Revolution followed the same plan in 2015; its "What Lies Below" is sung by Elize Ryd on the album, while the version Heather St. Marie sang on the demo appears only on the Japanese edition.

After signing a worldwide solo deal with AFM Records in November 2017 he toured North America as a trio with Dennis Ward on vocals and bass, and Fearless (2018) was recorded as a trio too, with Ward and Will Hunt of Evanescence. It was his first release after leaving Ozzy's band.

Quantum Leap (2021) was the first of his solo albums made entirely of guitar instrumentals, and its Japanese edition came out on 6 October, two days ahead of the rest of the world; a second disc carries seven songs recorded live in Budapest in 2018. Steel Burner (2026), the fifth, puts instrumentals and songs with guest singers side by side, and its title track began as a commission from a company that builds industrial machines for shaping metal.

With Ronnie Romero, and on to King Diamond: 2024 to 2026

His partnership with Ronnie Romero began in 2024, when Romero, who lives in Romania, invited him to play some acoustic shows there. The two had known each other for ten years; after shows in Romania and Greece came European festivals and, in 2025, a European tour under the name Convergence. "My Premonition", written so that they would have a song of their own to play on it, was released as a single in June 2025 and later placed on Steel Burner.

On 24 July 2026 King Diamond announced both the end of Andy La Rocque's forty years with the band and Gus G. as the new guitarist, who would write, record and tour with them while carrying on with Firewind and his solo work.

Japan

His first Japanese shows under his own name were at Club Quattro in Shibuya on 22 March 2017 and at Club Quattro in Umeda the next night, with Amaranthe's Elize Ryd as special guest. In May 2024 he returned with Firewind, the band's first Japanese visit in thirteen years, for shows in Tokyo and Osaka. In 2026 he played the guitar solo on "Flores a Flores" on PLUVIA, the major-label debut of the Japanese guitarist SAKI, and SAKI returned the favour with a solo on the Iron Maiden cover on his Japan-only EP, Steel Burning Live.

His appearance on the first day of FULL METAL JAPAN 2026 at Pia Arena MM on 24 October 2026, as Gus G. & Ronnie Romero, has been announced. The organisers announced a set taking in Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath songs, Rainbow and Dio songs sung by Romero, and material from both men's solo records.

Instruments and recognition

He was with ESP for twelve years, and ESP made his first signature guitars, before he moved to Jackson in June 2016. In January 2021 he launched his own pickup brand, Blackfire Pickups, whose first two sets, Proteus and Immortal, had until then come only in his Jackson signature models. Metal Hammer's Golden Gods gave him the Dimebag Darrell Shredder award in 2011, and the German edition of Metal Hammer named him Riffgott, God of Riffs, in 2017.

A note on sources

This article draws on the biography at gusgofficial.com; the descriptions of the videos on his official YouTube channel, @firetv; King Records' artist page and its product page for each Japanese edition, and the news on its hard rock and heavy metal site; the Tower Records Online product pages; the official FULL METAL JAPAN 2026 site; Blabbermouth.net reports of 14 August 2005, 21 August 2009, 26 June 2010, 22 June 2016, 22 November 2017, 25 April 2018, 8 January 2021, 19 May 2026 and 24 July 2026; Guitar World articles of 14 June 2011 and 4 September 2025; the official 2017 award winners list of Metal Hammer Germany; Gekirock's interviews of March 2014 and August 2015; Jackson Guitars Japan's interview of 2022; Guitar Interactive's profile of 2014; a 2002 interview published by Leviathan Records; the release data MusicBrainz holds for artist 722a5515-d564-4215-b4e3-08abad8869f0; and the iTunes Store catalogues for Japan and the United States. Dates, catalogue numbers, prices and running orders for the Japanese editions come from King Records' product pages, and for the international editions from MusicBrainz and the iTunes Store. Every video was verified by its uploading channel, and no fan re-upload is included.