Jason Bittner stands out not just as the powerhouse drummer of Shadows Fall, but as a passionate fan and devotee of the genre. In a recent interview with RichardMetalFan, Bittner shared a personal and fascinating look back at his musical journey, tracing the bands that shaped his love for metal — from the early days of discovering metal to the explosive energy of the Big Four, and beyond.
The band that first pulled Bittner into the world of heavy metal was none other than Iron Maiden. Recalling his first exposure to the band, Bittner explained how it all started in 1981, the same year MTV launched. At just 10 years old, he saw Iron Maiden for the first time and was completely captivated. “The band that got me into heavy metal, technically, is Iron Maiden. Maiden’s my favorite metal band of all time. That was the first band I saw of that genre, the day that MTV came on the air, and I was, like, ‘What in God’s name is this?’” Bittner said.
His love for Iron Maiden and their legendary frontman Bruce Dickinson became the foundation for his burgeoning interest in the genre, which quickly expanded to include other staples like Judas Priest. But it wasn’t an immediate love affair for every band he encountered. In fact, Bittner’s early experiences with some of the genre’s heaviest hitters were filled with skepticism. Metallica was one such band when a friend let him borrow a copy of “Ride The Lightning”.
“I think ’84, a friend of mine let me borrow a record. He’s, like, ‘Oh, you’ve gotta check out this band.’I took it home and I hated it. I was like, ‘What on earth is this?’ I taped the album just in case I might like it one day, and I gave the record back to my friend,” Bittner admitted. But that initial dismissal soon gave way to an unexpected transformation: “And a week later, I’m doing my paper route and I was humming. I’m, like, ‘What is this that I’m singing to myself?’ And it was the riff from ‘Fight Fire With Fire’. And I’m, like, ‘Oh, that’s that Metallica band. I didn’t think I liked that.’ And that started that.”
The journey didn’t stop there. Bittner’s experience with thrash metal grew to include Slayer, a band he initially couldn’t stand. “I hated Slayer at first,” he confessed. “I’m, like, ‘No way I’m gonna like this.” However, after listening to their breakthrough album “Reign In Blood”, Bittner became a true convert.
“Maybe a year after that or within that year, I got into Slayer. A friend of mine had ‘Show No Mercy‘ and he had let me hear that. And I wasn’t really that impressed, but then ‘Reign In Blood’ came out maybe a couple of weeks after he let me borrow ‘Show No Mercy‘. And I bought that.”
He recalled the time he spent obsessively listening to the album while on vacation in Florida, playing it endlessly on his Walkman. “I bought that and went on a spring break vacation in my sophomore year of high school in Florida with my mom. And all I did was just have ‘Reign In Blood’ in my Walkman — that’s dating it because it was 1985 — in my Walkman on auto-reverse. And that album was only 32 minutes long. I listened to that record incessantly for a week straight and just the whole time going, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to get to my drums. I wanna play these songs,’ because, in my head, I knew all the drum parts, knew everything. I had no fucking clue how hard thrash metal drumming was, and playing that fast was because, as I said, I was in the Maiden–Judas Priest camp still.”
That immersion and his attempts to play the material helped him realize the intricate, fast-paced drumming that Slayer demanded — a skill that would come to define his own playing style: “Jumping on the kit and trying to play ‘Angel Of Death’ at 15 years old. I was, like, ‘Oh my God. This is a lot harder than it sounds.’ So it was Slayer, then Anthrax, and it was basically through the ‘Big Four’ [of 1980s thrash metal]. Anthrax and Megadeth were the only two that when I first listened, I wasn’t, like, ‘Aargh.’ Like Anthrax, I was just, like, ‘Holy shit.’”
For Bittner, his deep connection with thrash metal wasn’t just about the genre’s big names. He also found himself drawn to lesser-known bands. One of his most surprising favorites is Flotsam and Jetsam. Bittner expressed a particular fondness for the band, emphasizing that his love for them went back long before he ever joined.
“Over the course of my life, I’ve tended to like the B- and C-level bands a lot, as in favorites, over some of the bigger bands. I mean, for example, if you asked me, ‘If you could only pick one if it was either Megadeth or Flotsam, what would you pick?’ I’d pick Flotsam. If you could only listen to one and you’re not allowed to listen to the other one again, I would pick Flotsam. And not because I was in the band. That was a love of that band for decades before I was even in it. Another one is Wrathchild America — one of my absolutely all-time favorite bands.”
Throughout the years, Bittner’s evolution as a drummer has been shaped by a wide array of influences. While he’s best known for his thrash drumming, Bittner’s tastes span genres. In the mid-‘90s, he immersed himself in the brutal sounds of death metal bands like Death and Morbid Angel.
“I’ve always been a thrash metal drummer. I’m not an extreme metal drummer,” Bittner clarified. “I like that stuff, but I can’t blast that 240, 260 that stuff. It’s out of my wheelhouse; it’s not what I do. But I like a lot of those drummers and went through that whole phase in the mid-’90s immersed into Death and M and that stuff and listening to Pete Sandoval and Sean Reinert and Gene Hogan. So, my influences go across the board, really. And let’s not forget Van Halen either.”