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
"Always do what you love! Always love what you do!" – That´s the motto of the Lower Bavarians of The Dead Notes. And, for their second album “Entertainment is the Purpose”, the band took exactly that motto straight to their hearts because the end result shows that they indeed love what they do. You can clearly hear the fun they had on all 13 tracks. Formed in 2003, The Dead Notes, this time, took their time with the follow up record – five full years.
The style of The Dead Notes can be best described as old school rock & roll with some punk and hard rock influences. The song "She´s born a rebel" reminds me a bit of Airbourne because of the hard rock-heavy riffs. But when I listen to the preceding songs I always have the feeling that it is still the same track as in the beginning. Maybe the songs could´ve been arranged in a different order to avoid these déjà vu moments. Also, the structure of the songs throughout the album is too similar between verse and chorus. And the chorus is always one part with background vocals and then back again to a part without. Perhaps the five Germans could have been just a bit more experimental.
The second last song, "Those are the Nights" is, according to the press info, an “homage to The Darkness”. It should let every The Darkness fan´s heart beat faster, but my heart doesn´t. And that´s because it is just a cheap copy of “I believe in a thing called love”. If you copy that much from a song, you can just right away go and cover it. So, apart from that piece, the rest of the songs on the album are not bad, I´m just missing a little bit of something special that would make the band unique. Without that certain something, there is a risk that the band doesn´t stand out far enough to be remembered in the long run and that would be a pity.
