Paul van den Broek

was born on the 27 th of June 1985. He started playing guitar at the age of 7 and got his first lessons on the acoustic guitar playing mainly classical music and some top 40 songs. After about 6 years Paul got his hands on his first Metallica cd and a new Paul was born. He borrowed an electric guitar from the local orchestra and started taking lessons on that one. In that period he just played for himself and did some gigs at school and some guest appearances with that same orchestra. When he got his first real guitar (an Ibanez RG 420) things got serious. He started listening to guitarists like Paul Gilbert, Steve Vai, Troy Stetina etc. At the age of 18, he started looking for a band. Having no clue of bands like Nightwish and After Forever, Paul was very surprised by the sound of heavy guitars mixed with the power of a female soprano voice.

When Ex Libris played at the Emergenza Benelux-finals, Paul was awarded with a Musicman guitar for best Guitarist of that evening. A very welcome honor that motivated him for playing for many, many years…