Unprocessed’s Manuel Gardner Fernandes names the viral shredders you need to watch in 2026
“People always like to compare,” Manuel Gardner Fernandes says with an exasperated tone. “I can’t help but wonder if people will think that this record is better than the last one.”
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The frontman of German tech-metal favourites Unprocessed insists that isn’t why the band’s new album is presented in a polar-opposite way to the previous one, but it’s clearly something that’s on his mind. The new album is called Angel and comes packaged with a lush blue cover. Put that side-by-side with the last one, …And Everything in Between, and it’s pretty stark. It had a fiery red cover. There was also a song on it called Hell. That’s pretty night-and-day, lads.
That sense of difference extends to the music. …And Everything in Between was hyper-aggressive and riff-based, whereas Fernandes says the new stuff is “song-based”. But, beyond that, Unprocessed are still Unprocessed. They’re still the same mind-bogglingly talented firebrands who’ve racked up millions of social media hits, almost definitely made you feel insecure about your guitar playing at least once, and long since figured their way around a snacky chorus.
“This album isn’t something that turned out super different [to the previous one],” says Fernandes over video call. “…And Everything in Between was, like, very evil. Just, evil packed into nine short songs. This one, it’s a little bit more of a journey. It has a lot of variety and there are more breaks.”
Image: Press
Angel is a smooth-as-silk convergence of tech-metal, prog and R&B. Opener 111 may kick off with a thudding riff and a cathartic scream from Fernandes, but it soon expands into a sensitive, silken chorus, laced with synth. On Beyond’s Heaven Gate, the band kick off with a Polyphia-like prog jam. ‘Far away, far away – we leave only angel dust,’ their singer/guitarist gently croons during the chorus. ‘Far away, far away – we can try, heal your wounds.’ That sense of Unprocessed exploring diversity even extends to the guest stars: Marc “Zelli” Zellweger of deathcore up-and-comers Paleface Swiss snarls his lungs out for Solara, whereas Jason Aalon Butler of Letlive and Fever 333 brings a confrontational rap to Head in the Clouds.
“I still haven’t met Jason personally,” Fernandes admits. “We just know each other online. He actually wanted to do something for …And Everything in Between, but, because of time, he couldn’t do it. I uploaded a clip to Instagram: this heavy, emotional, eight-string riff. He was like, ‘Wow, this is super sick! Let’s do something with it.’ He shared my vision for the whole song.”
In an interview earlier this year, Unprocessed’s drummer, Leon Pfeifer, called Angel a natural “next step” after …And Everything in Between. However, Fernandes disagrees.
Unprocessed and Zelli. Image: Press
“…And Everything in Between had this more shocking factor,” he explains. “We introduced a very thrash metal thing with a song like Thrash, and it had this very viral moment. I was not trying to do something completely different or mind-blowing on this record. My focus on this record was just having nice songs.”
The frontman reveals that that ferocity was inspired by anger over a record label deal gone sour. …And Everything in Between was Unprocessed’s first self-released effort, its 2022 predecessor Gold having come out via Spinefarm.
“Gold took us three years to release,” he explains, “but not because we weren’t ready. And as we got rid of our connection with the label, I just immediately hit my studio and was writing. It turned out to be super heavy.”
Outside of Unprocessed, Fernandes is a social media superstar. In 2019 and 2020, the player gained widespread attention through Instagram, with footage of him playing his instrument at seemingly inhuman speeds going viral. However, it seemed that for every floored fan Fernandes picked up using social media, there was another person insisting that he was faking his chops (he wasn’t). Even though they had no evidence to support their claims apart from the camera-phone footage being a bit fuzzy, they made their protestations very, very public.
Manuel Gardner Fernandes (right) and Zelli (left). Image: Press
“I had a journey with social media,” Fernandes reflects, “and it was kind of compressed into one year of ups and downs. I was just uploading my clips and they were skyrocketing all over social media. But, after that, immediately, I was caught in the middle of a shit storm. After that whole controversy, I was like, ‘Do I even want to be that bedroom guitarist, that social media guitarist? Or, do I want to step back and get my band to where I was as an individual guitar player?’”
In 2023, Fernandes admitted to Guitar that he was scared of being “cancelled” due to all the controversy. As a result, even though he has 311,000 Instagram followers right now, he barely posts videos of himself playing guitar at home anymore. Combine that with the fact that Unprocessed spent plenty of time on the road between …And Everything in Between and Angel, playing shows with the likes of Tesseract and the Callous Daoboys, and it’s clear which route he ended up taking. It makes sense when he explains that he always wanted to be a player in a band anyway.
Fernandes first picked up a guitar when he was three years old. His granddad had been a touring guitarist and, at the time, his dad was a bassist in a thrash band. “He introduced me to Metallica and Iron Maiden,” he remembers. “I’ve been a metal fan since I was born, basically.”
When he was a teenager, he also fell in love with dark electronic music, and he lists Massive Attack and Depeche Mode among his favourite bands of all time. That combo of influences – lightspeed, intricate metal alongside dark, synthy atmospherics – is extremely tangible throughout Angel, with the song Your Dress casting throbbing bass against industrial beats. He started playing in bands at school, and he formed Unprocessed aged 16 with co-guitarist Christoph Schultz, after they both auditioned for a spot in a cover band.
In 2025, that childhood project has flourished into an independent business, putting out albums and touring all over the world. However, Fernandes still finds the same joy in creation and production that has always been there. He also clearly relishes the kind of collaboration that only a band can give, as opposed to being a social media player out there by himself.
“My favourite thing to do still is sitting in my studio and producing music,” he says. “That joy hasn’t changed since the beginning of Unprocessed. The feeling of me bouncing a version of a song to the boys, or showing it to friends and family, that really gives me joy.”
Fernandes may not be hugely active on social media anymore, but he’s still plugged in to what’s going on there, especially what new guitarists are blowing up. So, when we asked him to name the viral players blowing his mind right now, he quickly rattled off a list of names. These are the online virtuosos you should be watching in 2026:
Ando San
“I’ve never seen a guy rapping and thumping at the same time! It’s super sick.”
RJ Pasin
“He’s done incredible things with guitar production. The majority of guitarists probably wouldn’t call him a guitarist in the first place. You can argue he is or not, but this guy is doing something fresh in the music scene. His style is all about production. He’s more a producer than a guitarist, in a way. He’s still doing all these sounds with the guitar that make it special.”
Spiro Dussias
“I don’t know what he’s doing! I don’t know how he is doing that! I came across him on Instagram.”
Ichika Nito
“In the beginning, what made him stand out for me was his melodies. His compositions, I felt that they were almost soundtrack-ish, and I wanted to do that as well. I just love the classy DI sound with a lot of reverb on it.”
Tim Henson, Polyphia
“When Polyphia first came up, I can’t remember the name of the first video I saw, but there was more solo shredding [in their music] back then. Since then, I’ve always checked out what Polyphia are doing. Tim started following me on Instagram, and the first stuff that we did together was the In The Cut video that Tim uploaded to his channel. After that, we did our song Real together with him and [Polyphia bassist] Clay Gober. After that, we went on several world tours and did Die on the Cross of the Martyr, which is probably the biggest thing we’ve done together.”
Marcin
“In 2019, 2020, something like that, he wrote me a message saying, ‘Oh, my hands glitch too [referring to Fernandes’ “sped-up footage” controversy].’ [laughs] Since then, we started doing videos. The stuff that’s super fascinating about him is just his way of using his instruments as a percussive element, which I love. He sounds the same live as he does in his clips, and I love that, as well. He has millions of followers, but he’s also pulling a lot of people live, which is really nice to see. He transferred it the right way, to the live audience.”
Angel is out now.
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