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. More info: www.facebook.com/slayer
R.I.P. Jeff! Festivals cancelled: ROCK AM SEE (GER) takes a break in 2013 "lacking attractive headliners"; BURNING SEA in Croatia had to succumb to a new tax regulation; yet purchased BS-tickets can also be used to visit METALDAYS in Slowenia.
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
OMG, punk rock! Well, I don´t really belong to the devotee of this genre, therefore I´ll just try to judge this as impartial as possible. These guys from Heidelberg, Germany deliver their second record “American Paranoia” with, believe it or not, 16 songs. Close inspection reveals quickly that seven songs are only a little bit longer than a minute, so this is not such big deal as first thought. What exactly is the meaning of a 1 minute song? Wouldn´t it be better to have it put back into a drawer and keep on working on it until it becomes a complete song, and then put it on the next record? Well, this has to be decided by the musicians themselves what they want to express. With extra cool artist names like Tony Baloney(guitar, vocals), Bootsy (bass, vocals), Sean E. Cash (lead guitar) and “Tater” Todd (drums), the Junktones release, five years after their debut “Your Boyfriend is an Asshole”, another portion of punk rock made in Germany. As the album title“ American Paranoia” already reveals, they mainly badmouth the USA, their inhabitants and VIP´s. The title track “American Paranoia” and songs like “Michael Jackson´s Dead” & “Hollywood” offer enough material to do so but, in my opinion, it only shows a lack of creativity. The press info already warns that some humor is needed here, but there are certainly things you shouldn´t make jokes about like “The fear of terrorism”, “death of a human” or “drugs and alcohol”. Music-wise not bad punk rock but I think it is possible to do it much better and at least more diverse.
