Biography & diary

Alen Brentini – singer, guitar player, songwriter

Born in Rijeka/Croatia on September 7th/ 1977.

Started playing guitar at the age of 9, influenced by my father Vjeko Brentini who is a musician as well – guitarist and singer. My dad is a local musician famously known for the work with his band “Kristali” whom I spent a lot of time with, traveling from gig to gig and this is where my interest in music began: As a kid I wanted to be a drummer, but we didn’t have any drums, so he started teaching me some chords on his guitar (Fender Stratocaster and Ovation) and taught me how to play some easy songs by The Beatles and various artists. But my main trigger was the Swedish band “Europe” with their guitarists Kee Marcello and John Norum who I discovered in 1986 and opened an entire new world for me. They just came out with “The Final Countdown” and blew me away. Back then I was listening to bands like Boston, Dire Straits, Journey, Deep Purple, Ronnie Milsap and stuff like that, so all of this, lead me to become a professional musician at the age of 19. At the age of 15 I joined my first band called Ritam Promjena (Rijeka, Croatia) and started playing locally and some of our first shows were at the stadium Kantrida in Rijeka where we performed in the front of 20.000 people at some charity show for children. From my early days on, I was always into hard rock and heavy metal; grew up with the bands like Saxon, Helloween, Alice Cooper, Blind Guardian and even harder stuff like Testament, Megadeth, Sepultura, Razor, Forbidden and others from the Speed/Thrash metal genre, but somewhere in the middle of my musical journey I started diving in to other styles of music like Blues and Country as well, so I could apply some more elements into my own playing and songwriting. 

At the beginning of the 2000’s I discovered Delta Blues and all its artists such as Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Lonnie Johnson and Big Bill Broonzy and started studyng their music as a singer as well as a guitar player. Later on I switched to modern blues like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ry Cooder and Eric Clapton, which helped me to shape my style of playing. At that time I was part of an acoustic duo with my long time friend Adriano Šuperina, performing over 200 gigs per year, which lead me to a lot of time on the stages and performing different songs from pop, rock, blues, country and all kinds of  styles of music. All the way from small bars, terraces venues, private events to bigger stages (usually as support act) and National Tv shows. In the Summer of 2002 we went on Croatian tour with Dado Topić, legendary singer from Yugoslavian band Time. The tour was called Cool Tour 2002 and we successfully accomplished over 15 shows followed with some national TV appearances promoting his new album at that time “Otok u moru tišine”.

By the time, my vision of music has changed. As much as I could listen, learn and observe different structures and styles that made me grown up and skilled in various genres, I enjoyed surrounding myself with better musicians than I was, as well as people who inspired me in general.

Today after 5 studio albums, I’m a rock musician and my music style is mainly melodic Hard Rock/Metal. 

During my career I’ve done many recordings and live sessions with established and well known world class artists.
 Somewhere at the beginning of the 2000’s I got the opportunity to perform and share the stages with Woody Mann (NY, USA), Franco Morone (IT), Daniele Bazzani and others at an acoustic fingerstyle guitar festival in Croatia.

Here are some of the facts:

In 2006 joined Aki Rahimovski band, Aki being one of the most popular and respected Croatian singers originally from the band Parni Valjak.
We toured Australia (6 shows in major cities) in 2007 and released a double album called ”U vremenu izgubljenih”,
for which I recorded guitars and wrote some lyrics (song “Zbog tebe čekam budan svitanja”)
The album was recorded in Los Angeles/Zagreb and it features several amazing guest musicians such as Marco Mendoza (Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy), Scott Henderson, Joey Heredia and Renato Neto (Prince),
among some of the best Croatian instrumentalists like Zagrebački solisti.

My first single “Da li to nešto nedostaje?” came out in winter 2006 on the label Croatia Records.

A few months later, we released a few more singles and took part at one of the biggest festivals in Croatia called
”Dora 2007 for the Eurovision song contest”.

My first studio album called “Treća Dimenzija” was released on August 18 in 2008 and it was supported by
many TV/Radio stations and live performances.
The album contains 12 tracks plus a bonus video for the title track filmed in Sydney/Australia during the tour in 2007 
with Aki Rahimovski band, it was produced by Ivan Pešut and released onl Croatia Records. This was the time when I formed my first solo band with Kruno Kukuljan on bass and Marko Duvnjak on drums (who also recorded 80% of the first album Treća dimenzija).

In the meantime I performed with and supported some of the greatest musicians in this hard & heavy genre, like Richie Kotzen, Kee Marcello (Europe), Marco Mendoza, Nicole McCloud (Michael Jackson, Sting),
Michael T. Ross (Liata Ford, Hardline) and many more.
 After a while, I made the decision to start writing new material in order to release my second album on the same label,but that deal fell through and I gave up on writing croatian songs, but instead did some instrumental music and also some of my fist songs in English were born. 

In 2012 I became a full time member of the Andreas Gabalier Band (the biggest Austrian pop star) as his lead guitar player. At the very beginning Klaus Bartelmuss, the manager who hired me as one of the first members of the Andreas Gabalier band, created the brand called “Volksrock’n’roller” where my role was to give that rock flavour to his live perfomances which shaped his style into something unique and different from anything on the Austrian and German market at that time. One of the greatest events that year was being nominated at the Bambi Awards for best shooting star in 2012 in Dusseldorf/Germany.
During 2012 we did 2 successful tours in Germany, Switzerland and Austria with all shows being sold out, including the biggest one at Wiener Stadthalle(Vienna, Austria) where we filmed our first live DVD/2CD, which was released by Universal Music (Germany).
Right after that, I jumped into recording/writing an acoustic CD/DVD with a Croatian singer/songwriter by the name of Ayra,
released by Dallas Records. I did all the arrangements, performed instrumentally and wrote some lyrics/music.

In September 2013 there was another big tour with Andreas Gabalier called “Home sweet home tour”, where we performed 30 big arena shows in Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland as well as recorded a live CD/DVD at the Olympia Hall
(Munich, Germany) in front of 13.000 people.
In the meantime, all new material was written for another solo album and on January 15 in 2014 my 3rd album
“Soul’d Out” was officially released by Install Records (Austria). This album contains 11 tracks written, arranged, performed
and produced by me, and mastered by Ayra.

In June 2015 I successfully accomplished an acoustic summer tour in Croatia (60 gigs) and promoted the album.

On October 2nd in 2015 I went on another big arena tour with the Andreas Gabalier band all across Germany, Austria and Switzerland called the “Mountain Man Tour” and we filmed another live CD/DVD at Berlin O2 World Arena/Mercedes Arena.

In December 2015 I recorded the album “Cathedral of the Black Cult” for the Croatian black metal band Black Cult.

On July 30th in 2016 for the fist time I performed live at the Olympia Stadium Munich as a solo artist opening for Andreas Gabalier in front of 72.000 people. My special guest was Michael Voss (MadMax, Casanova), who later became my producer for the next studio album.

July 11th in 2016 I performed an acoustic show with my dad Vjeko in Mönchengladbach / Germany as opening act for Andreas Gabalier.

On August 18th in 2016 I played an acoustic show with Eric Martin (Mr.Big) in Austria.

On September 15th in 2016 we performed/recorded a MTV Unplugged DVD/CD with Andreas Gabalier in Vienna at the
 Odeon Theatre along with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Christian Kolonovits.

On February 11th in 2017 I once more performed another live show with Mr.Big’s Eric Martin in Austria.

In March 2017 I went on the MTV Unplugged tour with Andreas Gabalier (Germany, Austria and Switzerland)
and got to perform at the top notch theatres and music halls of the world (KKL in Switzerland, Golden Theater/Berlin and so on…)

May 2017, I established the acoustic cover project called “Soul’d Out” with singer Karlo Horvat (Kryn) and basist Marko Vladilo (Kryn). 

In July 2017 I performed with my solo band at the famous venue Waldbühne, in Berlin as support act for Andreas Gabalier
 and later on at the Olympia Stadium in Munich, yet again in front of 72.000 people in the audience including special guests like Claus Lessmann (ex-Bonfire) and Michael Voss.

On September 2nd in 2017 I performed as a solo artist to support Andreas Gabalier at Hockenheimring in front of an audience of almost 100.000 people.