<sticks hand up timidly...>
I got bit by the metal bug when Van Halen and Scorpions were brand new and relatively unknown. I remember thinking at the time that Animal Magnetism was the absolute pinnacle of metal and could never be topped... I was, happily very wrong, and metal continued to evolve and mutate.
Major stops along the way included Metallica (my college-era saviors, many a late night in the computer lab was spent pounding BASIC or Pascal with my Master of Puppets cassettes keeping me awake and alert). Anthrax was a staple for a while, as were early Queensryche albums. Rammstein was a constant companion in the 90s, and I started a major Opeth jag in about 2001. I took a significant detour in 2005 when I discovered Iron Maiden was actually really good (Dance of Death is a great album). Meshuggah absolutely blew my world apart with Bleed and are still one of my favorites when I need something absolutely balls-out for a proper dose of catharsis. As much as I love listening to Meshuggah, I cannot play the stuff except for a few snippets to save my life. Too complicated for me (even though it sounds so simple and repetitive). My latest kick has been Voivod. I loved a couple of their albums in the late 80's and early 90's, but album to album they could be so hit or miss. Their recent The Wake album, however, is absolutely phenomenal and I've listened to it incessantly for a few months now. I've dabbled a little in Periphery, Tesseract, and Animals as Leaders, but while I respect what they're doing, none of them have made it into heavy rotation with me.
All I have out there is a few 14 year old Youtube videos of my playing with my cover band at the time. I suppose if I have anything like a claim to fame, along those lives it's that somebody lifted my live "Spirit of Radio" track and dubbed it onto one of those "look at these amazing kids playing a difficult rock song live" videos.
Gear? I play whatever PRS feels good to me at that moment, usually a 594, Studio, early 'aughts CE, or a maple-necked Custom 24. That goes into an Axe-FX III and a pair of Friedman ASM-12s. If I'm really in a mood, I light up a Rivera Knucklehead Reverb 100 half stack, but really the Axe FX has taken over most of the noisemaking duties in my man cave. It's just so easy and so good.