JOTNAR lead guitarist Ben Melero suffered a motorcycle accident and its sequels almost led to lose an arm. The guitar player was driven by another motorcycle past October and woke up in the Emergency Room with 6 broken ribs, scapula and collarbone broken. He had a surgery in the collarbone and was undergoing physical and occupational therapy since then.

About the accident, Ben says: “It was a little scary. I was driving my bike and without even notice, I woke up laying down in the ER with a lot of pain in the back. I had a few flashes of myself laying down in the road with no breath, and then in the ambulance. It seems that another bike crashed with a car and his bike went off and hit the side my bike”.

The guitarist have been in physical and occupational therapy after the surgery but after a couple months, the doctors detected a thrombosis in the left arm artery that impeded the flow of blood to the arm.

Ben says: “I had no idea what was happening but I knew something went really wrong. Many times, I woke up with a lot of pain in the arm and hand, like numbness or tingling in the hand for couple of hours with a lot of pain and my hand and arm went completely white. After many test and a few doctors, the vascular surgeon told me that I had absolutely no pulse in his left arm and that I could have lost the arm, but fortunately, there was just the enough blood coming through the secondary veins to keep the arm “alive”. The moment the doc told me that I had no pulse and that I could have lost the arm, was like if I were in a movie. I really could not believe it.”

JOTNAR signed a record deal with Massacre Records and released “Connected/Condemned” album in 2017, toured with Sonic Syndicate and played in a few European Festivals. The band was about to close an European tour when Ben had the accident. Due to the seriousness of the accident, the band decided to cancel the tour until the guitarist recovered.

Ben says: “I was really pissed off. I was dying to go back on stage to play the Connected/Condemned album but everything we worked so hard went to the garbage. We were going to do a great European tour supporting a big band, but we had to step out of the bill. This is the reason why we have been so quiet these months.”

The band will start writing new material for next album when Ben recovers completely from the accident, and planning to back on studios next year.

JOTNAR offers a redesigned and modern sound with strong and aggressive rhythms, smooth melodies, catchy choruses and insane growls. The band made its live debut in late 2008, and underwent several lineup changes, which led to today’s lineup, consisting of vocalist Mario Infantes, guitarists Ben Melero and Elhadji N’Diaye, bassist Octavio Santana and Jose Rodriguez.
The quintet has already played with bands such as Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Deep Purple, Korn, Amon Amarth, Machine Head and Avantasia, and played at festivals like MetalDays, Rock Fest Barcelona, Rock Bitch Boat and Villa De Bilbao.