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
The love child of Swallow the Sun and Before the Dawn? And one of the parents was obviously fooling around with Opeth, too...
OK seriously – I don´t want to suggest that Italian Valkiria copy those bands mentioned, but when listening to their fifth album, those bands inevitably come to my mind. This strange mix of Doom, Melodic Death and Progressive Metal is difficult to be placed on the Metal genre map – which is a sign of quality and originality. Still I have to point out that Valkiria alias ValkusValkiria (instruments and vocal) and Mike (guitar) rather sound Scandinavian than Italian. Perhaps because they indeed have direct input from much further North: the mastering was done by Jens Bogren (Paradise Lost, Opeth, Katatonia) at Fascination Street Studios, Sweden, after the recordings at Outer Sound Studios in Rome, Italy, by Giuseppe Orlando (who also plays the drums here). Anyway - the first notes of Dawn could be by Opeth or Crib45, the opening of Evening from a Swallow The Sun song, and this longing lonely clean guitar has this Saukkonen-sound. And there is of course the overall melancholic mood with a certain hypnotic quality – the qality lies in the mix of styles that makes this musical journey through the day (from Dawn to Night, or “a dark journey between life and death”, as the band info puts it) a very pleasant one.
