Members
Biography
2005
Already in winter 2005, the guitar player and songwriter Berthold Miller had the idea
to found a band on his own. These days, he played the rhythm guitar in a rock band
from his home town Tettnang called The Light Muffins. As he was a great fan of finnish
Heavy Metal-Bands like Nightwish, Sentenced and Stratovarius, he wanted to do this kind
of music on his own. His vision was to combine symphonic metal and gothic metal with male
vocals. The lyrics should be very melancholic and reflective.
Soon the ideas for the first songs (A sun for you, Legacy of hope, Beyond the waves) arose.
In summer 2005 Berthold left The Light Muffins because of musical and personal problems. He
intensely started writing songs and increasing his skills on the instrument to make this
project possible. At the same time he began to look for musicians to complete the band.
However his search turned out to be very hard and long.
2006
In spring 2006, keyboard player Enrico Hahn answered to an advertisement Berthold had put on
the internet. His band Soilent just had parted from their singer. So their activities were very
limited and Enrico was looking for new possibilities to make music. Berthold and Enrico met a
few times and in spite of the big difference in age, they harmonized very well. Therefore they
began to arrange the keyboards for Beyond the waves and Legacy of hope. They worked together
nicely and the first demo versions of both songs were developed at that time.
In the end of summer Berthold got a telephone call from a guy called Sali Hasan. Sali was
guitar player and singer in the very ambitious cover band Crash. Also Sali's side project called
New Turn Red just had split up and so he was looking for new challenges. Berthold and Sali met a
few times and soon it became clear that they had the same faves. Sali had the idea to ask the bass
player from Crash Bernd Ummenhofer to play in the project, too. He accepted and the band achieved
in getting a very solid and experienced bass player. Now only a drummer was still missing.
The four guys arranged the complete versions of Legacy of hope and Beyond the waves and did not
give up in searching a suitable man for the drums. Unfortunately there were many cancellations and
even after a few guys had been in the rehearsals they hadn't found the appropriate man yet. But
then Sali had the idea to call Peter Zimre, who once worked for his company in holidays.
Peter came, saw, and stayed.
2007
After a long period of thinking and a huge amount of rejected suggestions the name of the band was found:
Mooncry.
During the year 2007 the five guys worked hard. They arranged and practiced songs like hell. The homepage of
the band was created and implemented in this time as well. It was designed by Berhold himself and the
technical implementation was realized by Berthold and the "sixth band member" and band technician Christoph Tietz.
For the first two weeks of november, a studio for the recordings of the first album was booked. The Band went
for the Mediabase Studio in Geretsried near Munich. The producer was Jürgen Plangger, who is singer in the band
A_Life [Divided] and guitar player in the band Eisbrecher.
The Album is called Legacy of hope and was recorded, mixed and mastered in the period from Oct 29th -
Nov 11th. It contains seven songs and was released on Jan 1st 2008.
2008
In 2008, Mooncry did a lot of promotion for their debut album and they received many very positive reviews.
A live interview on the independent radio station "Kanal-Ratte" and an interview in the argentinian print-magazine
"Jugulator" were highlights just as an interview in the may-issue of the big German metal-magazine
"Legacy". The title-song "Legacy of hope" was on the sampler of the issue. Thereby this song was sold around
20.000 times in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
In November 2008, Mooncry played their first live concert on the music trade-show "mymusic" in Friedrichshafen,
Germany. The show was so convincing for the audience and the organizers that a headliner-gig in December and many
more outlooks for further shows followed.
Of course, the guys have not been musically inactive during 2008. They worked on material for the next album
without a break. The recordings for this record will begin in the winter of 2009 and the release is planned
for spring 2010.
2009
In 2009, the guys worked busy on the new album.
In the middle of the year, Bernd announced that he will leave the band because of private matters. Until a
matching bass-player is found, Alexander Schwenk replaces him as a session-musician.
In December Mooncry entered the studio to record their second album "Rivers of Heart". It was recorded and
produced at the Empire Studios of Rolf Munkes (Empire, Razorback, Tony Martin…) in December 2009 and January 2010.
The official release date is March 25th in 2010.