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
Some new food for the Post-HC/Alternative fans out there. The quartet from Ashes of Pompeii is back with its latest CD „Places“.This is already the 3rd release of the band, yet the band originally from Marburg, but now residing in Cologne, is not well-known so far. Let´s see whether this is going to change with this CD.
The thing that most likely will be remembered best after listening to „Places“, is the voice of vocalist/guitarist Tobias Mösch. Like it or not, I had my problems with it in the beginning, since some parts simply seemed „off“. This feeling actually changes, once you give it some more spins and you recognize that it fits quite well. The opener „Shriveling Sleep“ offers some pretty nice meldies and interesting rhythm work, that leaves a good impression. The second song „Concrete“ however, already doesn´t seem to be that strong anymore and is rather Rock and easy-listening. Don´t get me wrong, there´s absolutely nothing wrong with this and I´m sure that a lot of people are into this mix, but it´s a bit sad, that the interesting stuff you could find in the opener are somehow missing now. With „The Bells of Old Dunwich“ it gets a bit more interesting again.
All in all, this is for sure no bad records. The vocals are good and musically there´s also nothing to complain. Let´s hope they go back to more interesting rhythms and stuff on their next record. Even though this could mean, that this „scares“ away some of the easy-listening fans. „Places“ turned out to be quite a relaxed piece of music, so there´s nothing wrong with it from this point of view and deserves being checked out.
