HUNTINGTON -- If you want to know how Jimi Mitchell vibes, just check out his top friends on MySpace. There's room in the musical inn for Niccolò Paganini and Whitesnake.
Mitchell, who turns 33 later this year, has just churned out his second solo, neo-classical, heavy-metal, instrumental CD. The CD will be released Friday and will be available at local shops such as Scents From Heaven and Now Hear This, as well as online through Mitchell.
And people are finding it online -- thanks to some recent Web buzz built around the video that his minister, Adam Barraclough posted of Jimi and his new wife Jenny's heavy-metal wedding in a Huntington backyard. It featured Whitesnake's "In the Still of the Night" roaring while they walked down the aisle.
Since Barraclough put the video up on YouTube, it has received nearly 4,500 views as well as being shown and written about on the metal site Blabbermouth.net and www.wordpress.com.
"Oh yeah, we had the big epic heavy metal wedding in the backyard," Mitchell said. "It's weird because the whole reason that was put on the Internet was so that friends and family on both sides that didn't make it could at least go online, and that was it."
Mitchell said since the posting of he and his wife pledging themselves to metal and matrimony on Blabbermouth and YouTube, there's been a nice, steady influx of new folks checking out his music on his MySpace page.
"All of sudden a little over two weeks into our marriage, there's been four-and-a-half thousand views, and it just keeps climbing and climbing," Mitchell said. "The other upside to this whole thing is that Blabbermouth and YouTube have links to my MySpace page, and all of a sudden, all of these people want to know more about what it is all about. It has worked out in a cool way, and it was never intentional for that at all."
With its tongue-in-cheek title, "The Intimidator" boils up seven guitar-shredding original tunes that display the epic, classically built, heavy-metal thunder that Mitchell lives for.
A WMUL-FM DJ on the long-time heavy metal show, Stonehenge from 1993 to 1998, Mitchell said this second CD was birthed from a totally different place than his first CD, released in August 2004.
"This one is inspired by many different things opposed to the last album, which was mostly inspired by being angry," Mitchell said. "I make it a point not to be angry anymore."
Mitchell, who got custody of his 10-year-old son a couple of years ago, and got married this summer, said the good things in his life come blazing through on this CD, with songs such as "Forever Young (Jenny's Concerto)" and "Soulmates" both written for his new bride.
"Life has changed for me for the better, and I'm just making music because I love it," Mitchell said. "Each individual track is inspired by different things whether it's something from a film or something from my immediate life. 'Ride the Stratosphere,' the opening track and a really powerful track is inspired by just going outside and looking up at the sky and realizing it is really awesome and that I am really happy."
Mitchell, who stepped in to play bass for the regionally traveling heavy metal act Zeroking, said he started really concentrating on the CD after he left the group late in 2006 and just finished up the self-produced tracks this spring.
Armed with his axe, an Ibanez RG 321 with a wood-grain body, Mitchell set about meticulously recording and gathering his originals.
"Since I took my time with this, I was real nit picky," he said. "I wanted everything to give you goosebumps, every single track. I wanted everything to hit you really hard and everything to sound good, and each track to be its own unique thing. I think I have been able to achieve it on this thing."
Mitchell, who plays all the lead and rhythm guitars, bass guitars, keyboards and drum programming, said the title track is based on the fact that not too many folks around here are into his brand of shredding guitar-hero metal that usually comes out of Europe.
"People would always say man that's too intimidating for me -- I can't do that," Mitchell said. "A lot of people here that play guitar tend to play what is on commercial radio, but I've always relied on European publications and now the Internet. In the late 1990s when people were big on Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock, I was big on Hammerfall, Blind Guardian, Stratovarius, Yngwie (Malmsteen), and Man o' War. There's this big list of bands that now people know."
Mitchell said that is increasingly so because of video games such as "Guitar Hero III" that features the band DragonForce. He added that there are a lot more American youth being turned onto that stream of melodic, classically-influenced heavy metal that he plays.
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