Ilan Rubin (born July 7, 1988)
began playing drums at the age of 8, when he discovered his Father’s
1968, Silver Sparkle, Ludwig drum kit set up in the garage. After three
months of “toying” with the kit, he was jamming with his older brothers
and by the age of 9 was ready to play for F.o.N., a band that
eventually would do three stints on the Vans Warped Tour, where, in addition to playing with F.o.N. Ilan would fill-in on drums with bands such as NOFX. In 1999, F.o.N. opened Woodstock on the “Emerging Artist Stage” and, as a result, 11-year-old Ilan gained entry into the Guiness Book of World Records as the youngest musician to ever play on a Woodstock stage. Still at the age of 11, he submitted a video to Modern Drummer Magazine,
taken of him doing a solo during an F.o.N. performance, which was
picked by the magazine as the winning entry in its “Best Undiscovered
Drummer Under the Age of 18″ contest. The winner of the 18-and-over
category came from Argentina, and both drummers were invited to perform
at the 2000 Modern Drummer Festival, by which time Ilan had turned 12.
Currently, Ilan is the touring drummer for the Welsh alternative metal band Lostprophets (although he is American). He replaced Mike Chiplin, who quit the band in June 2005. He drums on two tracks from Lostprophets’ latest album Liberation Transmission: For All These Times Son, For All These Times and Everybody’s Screaming!!!. Lostprophets hired drummer Josh Freese to play the remaining ten tracks on Liberation Transmission.
The drummer on the demos for this period are unclear with all tracks,
depending on the time the demos were made, potentially being recorded
by either ex-drummer Mike Chiplin, frontman Ian Watkins or Rubin. Either Rubin or Freese may have recorded the B-Side Every Song, which comes from the album sessions. Rubin has, however, been touring with the band and appears in the videos for Rooftops (A Liberation Broadcast), A Town Called Hypocrisy, Can’t Catch Tomorrow (Good Shoes Won’t Save You This Time) and 4:AM Forever.
The band have previously stated that they do not see Rubin as their
permanent drummer currently, as he had yet to write any songs as part
of Lostprophets. However, guitarist Mike Lewis called him “an amazing
drummer, just phenomenal”, and suggested that they would like to
continue working with him.
Since then, Rubin has begun to write with Lostprophets. Recently, Mike
Lewis has suggested that Ilan is very much a large part of the
writing/recording process, making it more likely that he will remain in
the band permanently.
Immediately prior to working in the studio with and later touring with Lostprophets, Ilan was the drummer for the band Denver Harbor,
which included his older brother, Aaron, as bassist, who had played
guitar in F.o.N.; as well as 2 ex-members of the punk band Fenix*TX Denver Harbor was dropped from their label 1 year after their only full length album, Scenic,
was released in 2004 but not before the band did a few round-trip tours
of the United States and one week in Japan with a re-united Fenix TX.
Having taken a few lessons from Blink-182’s drummer Travis Barker and David Uosikkinen, drummer of famed ’80’s band, The Hooters, Ilan is primarily a self-taught drummer. He is also an accomplished guitarist and classical pianist
