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BIO

Dino Jelusick (Dino Jelusić), born 4 June 1992, is a Croatian rock singer, musician, and songwriter. He was the founder, principal songwriter and lead singer of hard rock band Animal Drive, which was formed in 2012 and dissolved in 2020. Besides working on several hard rock and metal projects, Dino became a permanent member of American rock band Trans-Siberian Orchestra since 2016. He also worked with Gus G., Mike Mangini, George Lynch, Will Hunt, Jeff Scott Soto, Joel Hoekstra, Steve Smyth, Jon Oliva, Kip Winger, John Macaluso, Deen Castronovo, Phil Demmel, Mike Portnoy, Henrik Linder, Justin Johnson, Tony Franklin, Kyle Hughes, Virgil Donati, Kiko Loureiro, Jordan Rudess, David Coverdale, Tommy Aldridge, Reb Beach,  Michele Luppi and others.

Dino got his master’s degree in the Academy of Music, University of Zagreb, in 2020.

On July 27th 2021, David Coverdale and Whitesnake announced that Dino became new snake and member of Whitesnake! After a part of the Whitesnake farewell tour was canceled, August 2022, Dino jumped in to sing for The Dead Daisies, replacing legendary Glenn Hughes.

So far Dino recorded numerous songs and albums with some legendary musicians: World of War 2 (Michael Romeo), Dirty Shirley with George Lynch, Magnus Carlsson’s “Free Fall”, Ralph, Stoneleaders…

As his parents also played musical instruments, Dino was introduced to music and singing at the age of three and started performing at the age of five by appearing on television and on international festivals.

Dino participated and won the first Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2003 in Denmark with his own song “Ti si moja prva ljubav“. He released his debut solo album, No. 1 in 2003 and an English version in 2004. He toured the United States, Scandinavia and Australia until 2005 and the tour included four concerts in Denmark with a total audience of 100.000 people. The same year Dino became the youngest nominee of the Croatian music award Porin at the age of twelve. In 2005, he was one of the three main acts at the Langeland festival in Denmark along with UB40 and Ronan Keating. In Croatia he released a conceptual album “Prošao sam sve” inspired by Marijan Gubina’s book “260 days”.

Ivan Keller is a young guitar player from Croatia, born December 5th 1993.

He grew up with perfect conditions for a new, young musician in a small city where rock music was very popular among kids and older generations so he started to play guitar at the age of 12. He bought his first guitar with his own savings.

Ivan is a self-taught musician.

Influenced mostly by bands like AC/DC, Guns’n’Roses, Metallica, Bad Company, Brian Adams.., Ivan and his friends formed their own first band ”Off Duty”. They started to play at birthday parties, bars, city stages and every possible event they could book. Later, Ivan formed his second band ”Fireball” and started to play much more gigs all over Croatia and in neighbouring countries.

In 2011, ”Fireball“ got their new singer, a Croatian rock star, Zoran Mišić. With this final lineup, they opened a concert for Guns’n’Roses in Croatia, 2012.

After the band split up, Ivan moved to Zagreb in 2015 and became a member of Dino Jelusick’s (TSO, Whitesnake, Dead Daisies) band, Animal Drive. They got a record deal, released one album and one EP, played all over the Europe, opened for Whitesnake and together with Dino,  he shared the stage with John Norum (Europe), Gus G (Ozzy Osbourne), Joel O’Keeffe (Airbourne) and many others.

In 2019, Ivan recorded a studio album with Mike Mangini (Dream Theater), Gus G (Ozzy Osbourne) and Tony Dickinson (TSO).

In April 2022, Ivan became a member of Marco Mendoza’s band and joined him for his Europe Tour. They did over 60 shows in 2022, including Full Metal Cruise IX (the prestigious cruise of WACKEN), more than 10 festivals with headliners like Slipknot, Sabaton, Testament, Behemot, Mercyful Fate, Phil Campbell (Motorhead), etc…

Working with all those big names and playing gigs around Europe during all these years, inspired Ivan to work even harder.

Luka Brodaric, bass player

Luka was born 1992 in Split, Croatia, in a musical family: his father was a member of the rock group “Metak” (Bullet) and studio guitarist and his mother is a professional studio back vocalist and member of the Gibonni Band since their start (1990’s).

Luka has been playing the bass guitar since he was 15. In his early youth he was a member of the bands: Last Man Standing, Made in Iron (Iron Maiden tribute band), Mindark and the most interesting of which is Trio Brodarić (rock/blues/funk), since 2007. Along with him the band consists of: father Zlatko on guitar and brother Goran on drumms. Luka is about to graduate from the Academy of Music in Ljubljana, Slovenia, majoring in contrabass. His musical expression varies in very different styles and types of music from heavy metal to pop music and classic. However, what he enjoys the most and feels the best are metal and rock. He grew up with good music because his father served him, since early childhood, musical role models such as Van Halen, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Ron Thala (Bumblefoot), Tony Macalpine and others…

During years of playing, the manner, expression and technique of his music were mostly influenced by bass players such as: Rex Brown, Billy Sheehan, Steve Harris, Robert Trujillo, Steve Di Giorgio, Cliff Burton and Mike Lepond.

Mario Lepoglavec is a young and talented drummer from Croatia, born September 22, 1994.

He’s been playing drums since he was 8 years old but got more into it when he turned 10. Mario grew up in a musical family where his uncle and cousin are professional drummers and who were also his personal drum teachers. He listened to a lot of rock music at that age like Guns ‘n Roses, Metallica and later got interested in more complex and heavy music like Dream Theater, Pantera, Lamb of God among others.

He started playing gigs at the age of 15 with different bands. At 18 he joined a local band and did shows all around Croatia, supporting lots of famous Croatian singers/bands in front of 5000+ people. When he was playing around Croatia, he learned from friends how to play bass guitar, guitar and sang along all the time.

Some of his big influences are Simon Phillips, Dave Weckl, Eric Moore, Tony Royster, Thomas Lang, Mike Portnoy, Vinnie Colaiuta, and the list goes on…

In September 2021 Mario played on the famous Guitare en Scene festival together with John Norum (Europe), and Gus G (Ozzy Osbourne, Firewind) where they did a couple of songs from John’s solo albums, Europe tunes and with Gus G some classics from Ozzy Osbourne.

In June 2022 he joined the power trio of Marco Mendoza (Whitesnake, Journey, Thin Lizzy, The Dead Daisies…) playing drums and singing backing vocals, which took him all around  Europe to over 50 shows and where he shared the stage with headliners like Slipknot, Sabbaton, Testament, Behemot, Gun, Mercyful Fate, Phil Campbell and played on Full Metal Cruise IX (the prestigious cruise of WACKEN) along-side  bands like HammerFall, Apocalyptica and many more…

Also in 2022 he was a member of an ALL STAR band which performed in France and included Joel O’Keeffe (Airbourne) on vocals, Dino Jelusick (Whitesnake) on vocals and keys, Gus G (Ozzy Osbourne) on guitar, Marco Mendoza (Journey, Thin Lizzy, Whitesnake…) on bass guitar and Ivan Keller (Marco Mendoza, Jelusick) on guitar in front of 5000+ people.

Mario is also a drum teacher and mixes and masters music videos. He is a studio session drummer and records songs in his own drum studio. There are two studio albums he recorded that are now in the process of mixing and mastering.