Rough Silk

Bio:

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A german interview filmed by SHGLand-TV...

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ROUGH SILK  - A NEW BEGINNING

It's the 20th band anniversary and the time is right to bring ROUGH SILK back to life – how can you do this better but with a new album!

Mastermind Ferdy Doernberg (known as a band member of AXEL RUDI PELL as well) teamed up with André Hort (bass), Mike Mandel (guitars) and Alex Wenn (drums), who are young and hungry musicians from the Hanover-area to bring fresh blood and enthusiasm into the band and most important to bring back more Metal into ROUGH SILK's sound again! So with the anniversary the new album will start a new era for the band and you can..t name it better then with the album title: A New Beginning!

ROUGH SILK were founded in 1989 and have released seven studio and one best of album so far in their history. During all these years the band has defined their very unique sound which is best described by the band name ROUGH SILK: "Rough" stands for the real heavy (sometimes even Thrash) Metal influences and "Silk" for the unusual singer-songwriter elements and piano-parts, combining both to their very own brand of heavy but yet Melodic Metal.

ROUGH SILK build up a good reputation as a live-act by suporting bands like HELLOWEEN , DEEP PURPLE, DIO, SAVATAGE, MANOWAR, FATES WARNING, ACCEPT, WHITESNAKE, AXXIS, EUROPE, SAXON and VICIOUS RUMORS among others.

The founding members were Ferdy Doernberg (keyboards, slide-guitars & vocals), Hilmer Staake (guitars), Jan Barnett (lead vocals, guitars), Ralf Schwertner (bass, vocals) and Herbert Hartmann (drums, vocals) but there have been some changes that created kind of different eras of the band’s history.

The first era contained the albums “Rough Silk” (Vinyl LP only), “Roots of Hate”, “Walls of Never”, “Circle Of Pain” and “Mephisto” followed by a first European tour with Savatage.

The second era started with the 5..th.. album when Barnett left the band and was replaced by Thomas Ludolphy. In this periode the band recorded the albums “Beyond The Sundown” and “Symphony of Life”  and supported Savatage in Europe once more, on Savatage’s special wish. During this time ROUGH SILK brought out their first best Of album “Wheels of Time”.

In 2002 Ludolphy left the band due to personal reasons and the band decided that they would not look for a new singer. On  the band..s 7..th.. studio album "End of Infinity", Doernberg, Hartmann and  Wunderlich shared the lead-vocals. But unfortunatly it became obvious that the band members had parted minds and had no common vision on this style anymore, so this finally led to the end of the era and Rough Silk was put on ice.

Doernberg stayed busy playing in the studio and on stage with acts like ULI JON ROTH (ex- SCORPIONS), HOLY MOSES, DESTRUCTION, GAMMA RAY, CHRIS CAFFREY (SAVATAGE), WARREN DE MARTINI (RATT), BOBBY RONDINELLI (RAINBOW, BLACK SABBATH), ROBBIE KRIEGER (THE DOORS), GRAHAM BONNETT (RAINBOW), DON DOKKEN (DOKKEN) , ROY Z, POWERGOD, TONY FRANKLIN (BLUE MURDER / WHITESNAKE), CHRIS POLAND (MEGADETH), JEFF SCOTT SOTO, DAVID PAICH (TOTO), BRAINSTORM and many more as well as he toured and recorded again with AXEL RUDI PELL. Even though he performed his own music doing many solo-shows something was missing. So he started looking for young and hungry musicians to form a new Metal band.

And as you already read he found the fitting band members and due to the 20..th.. band anniversary now the 3..rd.. era starts – with “A New Beginning”! Be sure it will sound heavier than ever!

Discografie:

• Rough Silk – 1991 (no official release only Vinyl)
• Roots of Hate - 1993
• Walls of Never – 1994
• Circle of Pain – 1996
• Mephisto" – 1997
• Beyond the sundown- 1998",
• Wheels of Time"- 1999 (Best Off)
• Symphony of Life"- 2001
• End of Infinity" – 2003

Line Up:

Ferdy Doernberg - lead vocals, slide-,lead- & rhythm-guitars, keyboards

André Hort - bass, backing vocals

Mike Mandel - lead- & rhythm-guitars, backing vocals

Alex Wenn - drums & percussion, backing vocals

Member Since:

Members:

Ferdy Doernberg - lead-vocals,slide-,lead-&rhythm-guitars, keyboards

Andre Hort - bass, background-vocals

Mike Mandel - lead-&rhythm-guitars, background-vocals

Alex Wenn - drums, background-vocals, percussion

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