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
I cannot say whether the guys from Thirteen Days, a four-man combo from Klagenfurt, Austria, borrowed their band name from the same-named 2000 political thriller. But I certainly can say something about their second record, which is just running in my player.
The music of the Austrians is a mixture of Power Pop, Pop Punk and Pop Rock: danceable, fresh and suitable for every party. To get you in the right mood, the record begins with a beautiful keyboard. This is then followed by the second track “Build your Own World”, kept in a certain tempo like almost all of the other songs of the record, too. The choruses are cleverly written in such a way that everybody can sing along cause they are impossible to forget (ever again). Even though, all this makes the songs sound very similar, in their case, it is not a negative thing. By the way, the band shot a funny video of their current single “Point of view”, which also features Daniele Brian Autore from Vanilla Sky. In it, the guys are chased by teenage groupies (played by the band guys themselves in ´convincing´ disguise) gone wild.
Three songs stand out the most from all the others: “Love or Passion” is a fast song but only lasts twenty-eight seconds. “The Walle” comes across very nice with its hooky bass lines. My favourite is “Between Heaven and Hell” because its rocky guitar riffs and solos make it a real rock song. The best things is, you check the album out yourselves.