Hard rock or heavy rock is a loosely defined subgenre of rock music typified by aggressive vocals and distorted electric guitars. Hard rock began in the mid-1960s with the garage, psychedelic and blues rock movements. Some of the earliest hard rock music was produced by the Kinks, the Who, the Rolling Stones, Cream, Vanilla Fudge, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In the late 1960s, bands such as Blue Cheer, the Jeff Beck Group, Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, Golden Earring, Steppenwolf and Deep Purple also produced hard rock.
Angra is a Brazilian power metal band formed in 1991. They have released nine regular studio albums, five EPs, and three live CD/DVDs to date. Led by Rafael Bittencourt, the band has gained a degree of popularity in Japan and Europe.
Half Japanese is an American art punk band formed by brothers Jad and David Fair around 1975, sometime after the family's relocation to Uniontown, Maryland. Their original instrumentation included a small drum set, which they took turns playing; vocals; and an out-of-tune, distorted guitar. Both Fair brothers sang, although over time Jad moved into the frontman role. As of the last several releases since the 1990s, according to the album and CD credits, the band composes and plays the entirety of the music while Fair, eschewing his role as guitarist from earlier albums, plays almost no guitar but is responsible for the vocals and lyrics, which typically divide into either "love songs or monster songs." The band, still a vital "art punk" unit, has released six albums since 2014 with the same personnel that recorded Hot in 1993. Their last three releases, Why Not?, Invincible and Crazy Hearts have all received four-star reviews from the U.K. magazine, Record Collector, while New Yorker also praised the 2021 release, Crazy Hearts. The band members are John Sluggett (guitar), Gilles-Vincent Rieder (drums), Jason Willett (bass), Mick Hobbs (guitar), and Jad Fair.
Terence Charles "Snowy" White is an English guitarist, known for having played with Thin Lizzy and with Pink Floyd, and more recently, for Roger Waters' band. He is also known for his 1983 solo offering "Bird of Paradise", which became a UK Singles Chart Top 10 hit single.
Denny Carmassi is an American drummer most notable for playing with many rock bands.
Dogwood is a punk rock band from Escondido, California founded in 1993. Their music has been compared to that of The Offspring, and they list Bad Religion, NOFX and Lagwagon as musical influences.
Lambchop, originally Posterchild, is an American band from Nashville, Tennessee. AllMusic referred to them as "arguably the most consistently brilliant and unique American group to emerge during the 1990s".
John Fryer is an English record producer. Best known for his production work, he has also performed as a musician, as one of the two constant members of This Mortal Coil, providing keyboards, strings and synthesizer sequencing for the band, and its offshoot, The Hope Blister.
Dann Lee Huff is an American record producer, studio musician and songwriter. For his work as a producer in the country music genre, he has won several awards, including the Musician of the Year award in 2001, 2004, and 2016 at the Country Music Association Awards and the Producer of the Year award in 2006 and 2009 at the Academy of Country Music. He is the father of American singer and songwriter Ashlyne Huff and brother of Giant and White Heart drummer David Huff.
Royal Hunt is a Danish progressive metal band. The band was founded in 1989 by keyboardist André Andersen in order to combine basic values of classic rock with progressive, current musical elements. The name originated from a painting seen in a museum by the founding member/keyboardist André Andersen.
Gehenna is a Norwegian black metal band.
Mark Avsec is an American rock keyboardist, songwriter, and producer. He was a member of the funk rock band Wild Cherry.
Pete Christlieb is an American jazz bebop, West Coast jazz and hard bop tenor saxophonist.
Mark Daniel Sanders is an American country music songwriter. He has written 15 No. 1 hits, 50 singles, and over 200 cuts, including the famous Lee Ann Womack single "I Hope You Dance", co-written with Tia Sillers.
Michael Christopher Landau is an American musician, audio engineer, and record producer. He is a session musician and guitarist who has played on many albums since the early 1980s with Boz Scaggs, Minoru Niihara, Joni Mitchell, Rod Stewart, Seal, Michael Jackson, James Taylor, Helen Watson, Luis Miguel, Richard Marx, Steve Perry, Pink Floyd, Phil Collins on "Two Hearts" and "Loco in Acapulco", Roger Daltrey, Stevie Nicks, Glenn Frey, Eros Ramazzotti, Whitney Houston, and Miles Davis. Landau, along with fellow session guitarists Dean Parks, Steve Lukather, Michael Thompson and Dann Huff, played on many of the major label releases recorded in Los Angeles from the 1980s–1990s. He has released music with several record labels, including Ulftone Music and Tone Center Records, a member of Shrapnel Label Group.
Nicholas Charles Moore was an English blues, rock and heavy metal singer, who was best known as a member of the British band Samson. He replaced Bruce Dickinson who left the band to join Iron Maiden in 1982. Moore left Samson in the late 1980s and rejoined in the late 1990s.
Andy Malecek is a German guitarist who has played in the bands Fair Warning and Last Autumn's Dream.
Elena Ferretti, better known as Sophie or Rose, is an Italian Eurobeat and Italo disco singer. She has performed and recorded for many record labels, under many aliases. Her music was produced by various well-known Italian producers, namely Giacomo Maiolini, Mauro Farina, Sergio Dall'Ora and Giancarlo Pasquini. She often collaborated with Clara Moroni, who wrote many of her compositions. Moroni also did most of the backing vocals/choirs for Ferretti's songs for Time Records. Together with Moroni, she was a member of the duo Gipsy & Queen. In 2011, she recorded and released an Italian folk song entitled "Io Libera". Among her best known hits is the song "My World".
Ciby 2000 is a French film production and distribution company founded in 1990 by Francis Bouygues. It was best known for producing art house and independent films in France and in other countries.
Helge Engelke was a German guitar player, composer, and producer most celebrated for his guitar work in the hard rock bands Fair Warning and Dreamtide. He has also employed his considerable guitar talents in acclaimed "studio work" and has guested on various artists' albums/CDs including vocals and guitars for his friend Zeno Roth. Herr Engelke was born on 24 September 1961 in Hanover, Germany. He has passed away unexpectedly on April 28, 2023. He died in hospital after complications occurred with a colon tumor which only had been discovered two days before.
