Jason Bittner (born January 11, 1970 in Niskayuna, New York) is an American drummer, best known as the drummer for American metal band Shadows Fall. He is also the current drummer for Overkill since 2017, and was the drummer for the thrash metal bands Toxik from 2013 to 2014 and Flotsam and Jetsam from 2014 to 2017. He has won numerous awards including the Modern Drummer Magazine reader poll for #1 Up and Coming Drummer of 2004, and in 2005, #1 Best Recorded Performance for the Shadows Fall album The War Within, #1 Metal drummer (2005/2006) #2 Clinician DRUM! magazine 2011. He is recognized for his tight playing, extensive skill with double bass drumming, particularly his ability to play complex patterns at high speeds, and his familiarity with numerous styles of drumming, including Latin and jazz. Career Bittner started taking formal drum lessons at the age of ten years. However he has stated that he "had been banging on pots, pans, and garbage cans since he was about five." A native of Schenectady, New York, he continued to take lessons and perform in his middle school and Linton high school jazz and orchestra ensembles before attending Berklee College of Music in 1988. After a year of intensive study, he left Berklee to pursue his musical career outside the educational environment. This led to playing in various metal and hard rock bands throughout the late eighties and early nineties. In 1994, he joined the band Stigmata, a prominent hardcore band in the Upstate New York Hardcore scene alongside legendary vocalist, Bob Riley. Over the course of the next 7 years, they recorded 3 albums, released a home video, and toured the U.S. and Europe with this outfit. Bittner also played in death metal band Burning Human with New York phenom Mike Stack. They recorded 7 songs that would appear on the album "We The People: A tribute to upstate NY's hardest." Most of these songs would be rerecorded for their first album which would not come out for another decade after Bittner joined Shadows Fall. Burning Human would eventually disband in the late 1990s. Stigmata disbanded in 2001; the following fall, Bittner joined Shadows Fall. Initially, he had signed on just to do one tour of Europe with the band, but subsequently decided to remain as a permanent member. In September 2002, the band released "The Art of Balance" and went