Coracko

Coracko was the name of a German hard rock band founded in 1991 that released their only album, New Virus Spreads, on Polydor in 1992. The group consisted of four musicians; Guitarist Peter Szigeti and bassist Frank Rittel were previously members of Warlock and UDO

Story
Rittel and Szigeti have been in various bands since 1980, including Snakebite and Beast, from which Warlock emerged in October 1982 through the merger of musicians from both groups. After Doro Pesch left the band Warlock in 1987 and it broke up, Rittel and Szigeti founded the band UDO together with Udo Dirkschneider, Mathias Dieth and Thomas Franke, but left it again in the same year and founded Energy. Although this group recorded a demo tape, but had no success with it and broke up the 1,991th Szigeti then played with Jutta Weinholdin the band Velvet Viper, and during this time he recorded pieces written together with Fank Rittel, drummer Martin Engler and singer Dirk Wicke. After everyone involved found that they were a good match and shared musical interests, they founded Coracko, and Szigeti left Velvet Viper.

The band managed to sign a record deal with Polydor, and on March 30, 1992 the group began recording their debut album in the RA.SH recording studios in Gelsenkirchen, which they also produced themselves. Coracko was considered by the trade press as the "hardest representative of Groove Oriented Metal" and was musically described as "somewhere between the old Van Halen and new bands like Extreme or Mr. Big ". On August 22, 1992, the group presented itself to the audience at the Popkomm music fair in Cologne.

Coracko released the album New Virus Spreads on September 28, 1992 , which contained thirteen tracks. The reactions of the trade press were different: The magazine Metal Hammer, for example, judged the album that the music on the recording was "frighteningly average Metal , and the following three songs" would be "not a new chapter Hard'n'Heavy- To write history. In the songs in which the band deviates from familiar paths, they are by no means happier. Rock Hard, on the other hand, was more positive and emphasized that the "typically Teutonic touch" was rather seldom heard on the album, rather New Virus Spreadshas become a "quite international album" containing 13 "predominantly strong compositions". The songs are “all not produced too smoothly” and “therefore do not lack the necessary hardness”. to let. The album lives "to a large extent from the very good guitar work and the powerful, multi-faceted vocals." Of course, one or the other failure is also represented, but overall, New Virus Spreads is an "interesting and unusually heavy boom," the earned her eight points (out of a possible 10).

The song Overblown Roses was released as a single, as other tracks were included on the CD single Run With The Pack and Don't Cry For The Moon.

In the course of 1993, Frank Rittel was replaced by bassist Alex T. Walker, and the band did a tour with him in the early summer of 1993 as a support act for the band Sven Gali, where they also presented new songs. In addition to another line-up change (Dirk Wicke was replaced by Leon Goewie, who had previously sung with the Dutch band Vengeance ), there was also a change of name: the band was now called Stonewashed. She released the album Way of Thorns under this name in 1995.

Discography
Album


 * New Virus Spreads (1992)

Single


 * Overblown Roses (1992)