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
Those who would like to have their auricles properly modified are warmly recommended to listen to the latest record by Norwegian duo Formloff. Alright, ´warmly´ is maybe not the right word here because, as the cover artwork already suggests, things are a bit more chilly, rough and gloomy on here. Bernt Karsten Sannerud and Marius Blekspetl Sjøli are the names of the sound craftsmen, who take plenty of time with creating their dark soundscapes. Thus, already the first three songs take as long as a whole punk rock album. And that´s not due to low speed – double bass is in high abundance.
With Mig Og Drit one gets the feeling as if a horde of headless horsemen approaches that is not only very fast but also very pissed about the loss of their, amongst others, larynxes. Speaking of larynxes, the lyrics are uttered in the most screaming and raspy way. However, there are a few spots with clean vocals, too. With the title track Spyhorelandet, for example, there´s clean chorus or delay-like second voice in the last part of the song, which almost made me sing along. But, dear readers, fear not, the album is still full of wrath and free of any kitsch from start to finish.
The two Norwegians also try to soften popular genre conventions with compositional talent and lots of creativity. They do succeed and thus provide some surprising moments but here and there it sounds a bit too fabricated. A dissonant scale here, some jazz organ there and, to make the avant-garde complete, a saxophone in the epic last song Drokkne I Ei Flo Ta Aske. I have to admit that the saxophone, after giving it a few tries, eventually works for me and the melody nicely complies with the dark soundscape, but in other places all of this sounds just incoherent. All in all, with Spyhorelandet Formloff delivered a quite formidable album.
01. Det dritet som renner ut i ua
02. Harde ord pa kammerset
03. Spyhorelandet
04. Faen!
05. Mig og drit
06. Skaevven
07. Kon-tiki museet brenner
08. Den gamle jorda
09. Drokkne i ei flo ta aske
