Artist description In the late 80's Mark Mangold (keyboardist and songwriter extraordinaire, having played with the likes of Valhalla, AmericanTears, Touch and Michael Bolton), after the experience with Fran Cosmo (who eventually went on to become the Bostonsinger) met, through a mutual friend/songwriter, Al Fritsch coming out from the experience with the band TZR. Mark had thechance to play him some songs he was working on and he was completely blown away by Al's voice and they eventuallydecided to create a band. The duo started very soon to write and record some demos that eventually earned them the chanceto do a showcase for Capitol. That experience turned to be very weird for the guys and so they decided to shot a couple ofvideos of the most consistent songs : "Love Has No Pride" and "Maybe It's Love". This move lead them to CBS Associatedwhere the, then president, Tony Martell, enjoyed the songs so much that he dicided to sign the band. In their first album theduo was helped by a good deal of friends : Tony Bruno, Bob and Bruce Kulick (Kiss), Kenny Aronoff, Benny Mardones,Fiona (who also wrote a song with Mark "Hard Way Home" for the record) and many others. The record was just beingreleased when there was a big re-organization at CBS and the band found itself with a new record company president. Thiswas not great in that D,SS were Tony's "project" and the new "boss" had his own "projects". They decided to release "If ThisIs Love" as the single (not "Love Has No Pride") though without any real push. Meanwhile the record was being very wellreceived, including in Europe, but the band couldn't get any support from the record company. That's why Mark and Aldecided to be released from the deal and immediately got the interest of Mr. Martin Hooker at Music For Nations who signedthe band and brought over D,SS to England to tour in support of the band FM. Playing live, especially in rock venues, makesyou play a bit harder and Mark and Al started to write songs that were more aggressive and would work in that environment(for instance "Drivin' Wheel", "Pedal to the Metal" (D,SS's "Deep Purple" derived set opener), "Veil Of Tears", etc. They alsoplayed "Can't Get Enough" (by Bad Company) which went over very well as a last encore and which ended up on the secondrecord. Coming back to the States D,SS immediately began working on "Drivin' Wheel" the second CD. Not wanting becalled "wimps", that terrible English phrase, melody was sometimes sacrificed for the more aggressive approach and thesecond record was a bit "harder" than the first, Al was singing a bit more raspy. Somewhere in there, Mark had worked a fewdays with Michael Bolton and they wrote "It's Gonna Take A Miracle", which Al sang beautifully and had also gotten togetherwith Aldo Nova again with whom he wrote "Hard to Hold". The band toured extensively in support of FM (once again in UK)and UFO (in Germany). In order to accomodate the harder UFO audience, the band emphasized the more aggressive songs,(the piano/voice version of "Love Has No Pride" was DEFINITELY cut in half or often not done...).Coming home the duo began to work on more songs and eventually recorded "Excelerator" which was a more eclectic CD,ranging from the instrumental title track, to the bluesy "Let It Ride". "All I'm Livin' For" was written as the "single" which was avery well received classic for D,SS, and also went into some different places instrumentally, eg. "Inside You" basically"spreading out" a bit. Clearly, in the States, "alternative" music was happening and the band did not feel the need to emulate thefirst "melodic metal" record again and did not want to follow the crowd and write "alternative" songs.After having benn on a hiatus for quite a long time Al and Mark still wrote and worked together even if there was no record towork on. Though, they always knew they would do another record for the strange reason that Mark always could envision thecover of the record. D,SS had always had these "steering wheels" on the covers and the last "Excelerator" was going to aspiritual place (a pyramid) but Mark always saw an eclipse where the light from the hidden sun formed the handle of the wheel,and a faint shift in the middle; a "natural" phenonemon rather than a manufactured wheel. Also Mark felt the need to hear all the"single's" put together on one record.Al and Mark had written some songs, and also had the almost completed tapes of songs written long ago that never ended upon records ("Look At What You Got" which was written with Michael Bolton for his "Everybody's Crazy" LP, and "WaterFrom A Stone"). Mark wrote the hypnotic "Road to Paradise" which is a synthesis of the spiritual music contained in his soloCD "Mirror Image" and a new rather aggressive sound and arrangement (which actually came in a dream) that was uniquely"Drive, She Said", a departure from that negative/angry/evil sound so prevalent, but rather positive and spiritual-New AgeMetal. Al had written a Beatles' like song "Suddenly Closer" with his friend Gary Gold, which was rearranged a bit. The albumalso features another new beautiful song which synthesizes the style of the second and third record, the marvellous "Fallin'Again"The album is full of splendid radio friendly songs, rockers and ballads and can appeal both to fans of Pop Rock stars likeMichael Bolton and of classical hard rock.

Music Style Melodic Metal

Group Members Mark Mangold and Al Fritsch

Albums Road to Paradise

Location NY, NY - USA

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