Mephisto (band)

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Double action
General information
Genre (s) Heavy metal
founding 1979 as Mephisto
1991 as Double Action
Website http://www.double-action.net/
Founding members
Jens Schuwerk
Thomas Hoffmann
guitar
 Michael Sündermann
Christian Schubert
Andreas Korte
Current occupation
singing
 Ronald Pilgrin
guitar
 Michael Schirmer
guitar
 Jens Neumann
bass
 Torsten Arndt
Drums
 Andreas Korte
former members
guitar
 Roland Czech
guitar
 Mario Schneider
guitar
 Andreas Schwendemann
bass
 Reinhard Repke
bass
 Frank Live

Mephisto was a German rock band. It was founded in 1979 in East Berlin by music students and developed into a highly regarded band in the metal scene that emerged in the GDR in the mid-1980s . Since 1991 the band has been called Double Action .

Band history

After the founding, the band changed their line-up several times, at times also worked with their own brass section, and experimented with different musical styles until the final style was found in 1982 with heavy metal . The two lead guitars were typical of the band's sound .

The line-up at that time included: Jens Schuwerk ( vocals ), Thomas Hoffmann ( guitar ), Michael Sündermann (guitar), Christian Schubert ( bass ) and Andreas Korte ( drums ). Musically, the band was based on Saxon , Ted Nugent , Judas Priest and Accept . Titles from these bands also made up the majority of Mephisto's repertoire. Increasingly, however, they also created their own titles ( Urlaub , Stop , Umwelt and Impro ), which were composed by the two guitarists. Because of the harsh sound , the band was denied media attention for a long time, but thus earned the favor of the public and was for a long time an insider tip in the still young metal scene of the GDR . The title Peace of the World , created in 1983, was one of the few Mephisto compositions that could be produced on GDR radio .

In 1984 Sündermann left the band and later played in Formula I and Regenbogen . Andreas Schwendemann came for him. Schubert and Schuwerk also left the band. The new bass player was Reinhard Repke, who switched to Reform a year later and was replaced by Torsten Arndt. Ronald Pilgrin took over the vocal part. In 1985 the two guitarists Hoffmann and Schwendemann left and were replaced by Roland Chech and Jens Neumann. In the new line-up, Mephisto did without German-language texts and from then on only sang in English. This made further studio productions or even recordings with the GDR label Amiga impossible, but the band's popularity grew rapidly. When Czech moved to Headless in 1988 , Michael Schirmer came on for him.

With the change in the GDR, new opportunities arose for the band. In 1990 Mephisto opened the Metal Hammer Festival in Hanover. Mephisto was on stage for the first time with renowned bands such as Metallica and Dio . A year later, the band changed names and has since performed as Double Action. When the debut album Fireproof was produced in-house in the mid-1990s , Uriah Heep and Nazareth noticed them and went on tour together with Double Action. This boosted the band's fame and eventually enabled the production of an album on Breaker Records .

Discography

  • 1998: Fireproof
  • 2002: Sokaris

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Web links