Delco Band to Have Their Song Played On Mars Rover
How does a local metal band from Delaware County have a connection to NASA’s mission to Mars? Four kids from Delco; Nick McGrath (37), Chris Kline (36), Rick Donahue (39), and Christian Flickinger (41); and their mutual love of heavy metal are making it happen.
It starts in the Springfield, Pennsylvania basement of Christian Flickinger, who had an idea to start a band with some local musicians. One of Christian’s friends got him in touch with Chris Kline out of Holmes, PA., a guitarist who was beginning to get some notoriety for his progressive and brutally heavy riffs. They decided to work on an album out of Christian’s home studio, Laser Shoes Studios. Together with Nick McGrath, a Springfield vocalist well known in the bar scene for his wailing vibrato, and Rick Donahue, a Drexel Hill drummer who made his name belting out ear crushing rhythms with Delco cover bands, they formed Berserker.
Originally, the goal was to simply make an album they would love to listen to and put it out in the world, not for notoriety or fame, but merely for the enjoyment of creating their own art. However, things got interesting when Derek Flickinger, Christian’s father, had a chance meeting with Jason Achilles, a musician out of Los Angeles who was doing some audio work with NASA. Jason was key in designing the two microphones that would capture sound from the Perseverance Rover on Mars and send it back to Earth in clear, high-resolution, sound. These microphones were able to not only record the sounds of the descent, but the Martian environment itself, which had never been done before.
Through some collaboration, Berserker was able to get a copy of the first sounds ever taken on Mars. They jumped at the chance to incorporate those sounds into their music. They began writing ‘Perseverance’, a song aptly named after the Mars Rover. “The song is about humans traveling to far off planets and what that would be like”, Christian says. “We wanted to capture that feeling of wonder and excitement that these people will inevitably feel, but also the fear and dread that can come with traveling into the unknown.”
The song includes the aforementioned sound in ‘Perseverance’ during the bridge between the first half of the song and the start of the guitar solo section. “I feel that this is an important moment in the history of our planet,” Christian explains, “and I want to be able to share a piece of that in our own music.”
The story doesn’t end there. NASA is currently building a second rover with a plan to travel to Mars in the next year. This rover will be fitted with speakers that will eventually play sounds on Mars. This has also never been done. One of the goals of groups like The Mars Society, the world’s largest and most influential space advocacy organization dedicated to the human exploration and settlement of the planet Mars, is to drum up excitement for Mars and the future of space exploration.
That is why Berserker is working to get ‘Perseverance’ sent to Mars with the new rover to be some of the first music ever played on another planet. “It excites me to think that our music could be played on another planet! You never know who could be listening up there.”
Here is the link to the article on this mission with Jason Achilles and information on The Mars Society.
