Sad news: The music world mourns the loss of Ray Manzarek (74), founding Member and keyboarder of The Doors, White Zombie drummer Phil Buerstatte (44) and Uriah Heep bassist Trevor Bolder (63). R.I.P.!
German Hardrockers BERSERKER will donate 18.000€ to the Berlin cancer charity for children on May 25. November 2011 BERSERKER front man Schröder was diagnosed with cancer, now he is cancer-free. In 2012 the band collected money for this charity at their concerts and will also continue to do so in the future. Slayer´s Jeff Hanneman is dead: he passed away at about 11AM on May 2nd near his Southern California home because of liver failure due to an infection after a spider bite. R.I.P. Jeff!
The Siberian Jay music video "I´m Holding" featuring Mikko Sirén from Apocalyptica on drums - we reported about the videoshoot in our "1h with" Special - can be watched here: http://youtu.be/C-hSNurZVcs
Pathfinder are a Polish Metal band that already exists for 6 years and now releases its 3rd album. The band members themselves describe their style of music as a combination of classic music, film scores and a variety of Heavy Metal. All in all, this classification is correct but it is important to point out that Heavy Metal is absolutely the basis of the music.
To be quite honest, I don´t know anything about the first two releases of Pathfinder, hence I can only describe their current output “Fifth Element” without any comparisons to its predecessors. The current release shows that Pathfinder are ambitious musicians. While the Metal basis (guitars, bass and drums) are only a little bit above average, the orchestration and the vocal arrangements are really ass kicking good. The vocals are using the whole variety of what is possible in (melodic) metal: high vocals, rough vocals, female vocals and also choirs. The orchestra parts, too, are well arranged. Certainly, they are from synthesizers but they almost sound like real instruments and that´s the way it should be! Sometimes the way they combine certain elements remind me of the Italians of Rhapsody (of Fire).
But not everything is absolutely great on this record. While the arrangements themselves are brilliant, the hooklines and especially choruses are really weak. There is almost nothing that remains in my musical memory. It takes even many times until you can identify the choruses. Normally, great choruses are the strength of melodic Metal (in comparison to other styles of Metal) but in this case they aren´t. Nevertheless, this record is good and creates excitement for more.
