Catero, Chris

KRANK GEAR USED: Dirty Valve Head, Basszilla Cab

Chris Catero became a bassist years before he actually touched the instrument, being “ruined” as a child after seeing Gene Simmons of Kiss, pretending to be the God Of Thunder and playing a mean tennis racket! Music is in his blood with his mom being an award winning soprano and his dad a pro rock drummer in the 60’s and had many different styles of music playing around the house while growing up. Early on he fell in love with heavy metal music and was heavily drawn to the basslines of Steve Harris of Iron Maiden and Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath. It wasn’t until age 14 that he got his first instrument, a Sears guitar as a Christmas present, that he sold within a couple months to buy a Ibanez Destroyer bass and started his love of the low down.

Having played in various cover bands while putting himself thru college at New Mexico State University, he formed his first original band called Wardog with Tom Gattis, the ex-Deuce and Tension guitarist. Wardog’s self-titled EP got them noticed and the band went on to sign a worldwide deal with Metal Blade Records that produced two records, “Scorched Earth” and “A Sound Beating”, earning critical acclaim and mainstage appearances at both the prestigious Wacken Open Air and Bang Your Head festivals (including having Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson sit in to sing “Flight Of Icarus”!). It was also early on during this period Chris met guitar god Marty Friedman of Megadeth fame, who had played with Gattis in Deuce in their youth. Friedman had recently moved to Phoenix, AZ and the band followed suit upon all the members graduating college. Wardog broke up after supporting the “A Sound Beating” record but Marty and Chris remained good friends with Catero tracking or helping Marty track numerous projects at Friedman’s home studio.

After the demise of Wardog Chris along with bandmates Paul Sullivan and Eric Bongiorno formed Razer and recruited longtime friend Jeromy Graves as second guitar. Catero was the original defacto singer of the band but wanted a singer to match the music they were creating and finally found ex-Shift singer Chris Powers. Powers is the voice on Guitar Hero III’s “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” and his powerhouse vocals completed the band. Also around the same time Friedman asked Chris to join the touring line up for his solo band and has served as his touring bassist since. You can hear and see his bass playing on Friedman’s “Exhibit A: Live In Europe” cd and “Exhibit B: Live In Japan” dvd. The newest Razer cd, “Dark Devotion” will hit stores the end of summer 2009.

Catero is also a member of the Krank Amplification team, directing artist relations and domestic sales as well as overseeing marketing and product development. He created the Rev Jr. cab 1×12 cabinet originally as a recording tool for his home studio, as well as designing the new Basszilla cab, Krank’s first bass cabinet, after having the idea to combine his touring setup of a 4×12 and an 8×10 into one cab…. Chris is also the spokesman for the company, appearing in most of the company’s official videos and interviews.