Col Brown was born in Liverpool, England and grew up in Sydney, Australia. Col began playing guitar at age 20 after being highly influenced by such artists as Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, David Gilmour and especially Eric Clapton. Col met Eric after a concert in Sydney in 1990 and was so inspired that he began teaching himself guitar.
Col is self-taught on guitar and vocals and began playing lead guitar in the Covers band The Scam in 1993 in Adelaide, South Australia. The Scam received radio promotion on the Triple M FM Adelaide radio network and opened for Appetite For Destruction (Guns N Roses Tribute Show) to a packed to capacity house at The Venue in Adelaide.
After pursuing Mining Engineering and graduating with Honours in 1996 Col turned his attention to the Music.
Heavily influenced by Black Sabbath and by David Bowie, Col left The Scam to pursue his own music. Over the last decade he has been writing and honing new material. He has evolved a personal style which combines blues based guitar with a heavy metal edge and dark left of centre lyrics which have a crystalline minimalism. Always wanting to be the best, Col is constantly enhancing his writing abilities and improving his musical and vocal talents.
With 40 plus original songs in his repertoire, Col launched selected work on Myspace in 2006 with 7,200 plus plays in a year. His “You Are The Killer” demo had over 2,600 plays.
In April 2007 Col formed the dark rock/metal/punk/acoustic band "Dark Synergy" with lead vocalist Nellie Mokbel.
The Dark Synergy EP titled “You Are The Killer”, released independently June 2009 on Dark Synergy Records (DSR) features Simone White (ex Michael Franti – Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy) on drums, as well as Stuart J. Spaans on fretless and standard electric bass. ”You Are The Killer” is carefully produced, arranged and timed and has won over both, national and international fans.
The title track from the EP, “You Are The Killer” was in rotation on radarradio.com.au, Australia Top 50 for 4 months and won Ugly Phil’s unsigned band competition 2 December 2009 on Triple M FM Australia. Both the tracks “You Are The Killer” and “No Illusions” have been played on internet radio stations in the USA, and “No Illusions” was included on the USA Gothic compilation CD “The Funeral Vol 4”.
Col’s latest solo project 2010’s GSL or ‘Grey Splintered Light’ see’s him take a more experimental approach with his music fracturing the fixed genre boundaries with new unique sounds!
Nutshell......
Heavy guitar riffs, sizzling lead guitar, cool vocals, and dark left of centre lyrics complete the package. ‘Think David Bowie meets Black Sabbath’. ‘Col Brown is a guitar player to listen to! And the songs ain’t bad either……’, Check him out people!