Category: New album releases

SIKTH BEGIN WORK ON NEW STUDIO ALBUM & CONFIRM DETAILS OF FIRST SINGLE SIGN TO NEWLY CREATED LABEL IMPRINT MILLENNIUM NIGHT

SikTh, the UK’s progressive metal forefathers, have commenced recording their brand new studio album.  The, as yet, untitled 3rd album will be their first new full length since 2006’s ‘Death Of A Dead Day’ and follows on from last year’s acclaimed Opacities EP recorded after their reunion performance at the UK’s legendary Download Festival. The new album is scheduled for a May 2017 release, with the first single and video entitled “No Wishbones” due to be released on Friday 10th February.

Vocalist Mikee Goodman reveals how the recording sessions are progressing “We’ve started recording and it is sounding really vibey so far. This album should be a lot more aggressive than our Opacities EP on the whole. A lot of slamming grooves there, also lots of intricacy and dynamics as always”. He goes on to explain the creative process within the band “There is a formula in SikTh which works well. I always take the lead in the early stages and also I write all lyrics. But of course I am open to Joe Rosser, our new vocalist’s melodic input later on. We have not entered that stage yet. These initial steps are me laying my ideas in, since I have a great studio set up, if I do something awesome now, it goes straight on the record. That’s a great thing because as most vocalists will tell you, it’s all about the vibe and feeling. It’s all about the moment.”

The vocals are primarily being recorded at Mikee’s own studio and at Adrian Smith’s (Iron Maiden) R&R Studios; Mikee & Adrian Smith worked together previously on the Primal Rock Rebellion project. The guitars and drums will be recorded at the renowned Monkey Puzzle House studios. Dan Weller will be producing, alongside Adam “Nolly” Getgood (Periphery), handling mixing duties.

The new album is to be released via Millennium Night, the newly created imprint from Snapper Music, home of Peaceville Records & Kscope. The label imprint name, chosen by SikTh, comes from the track taken from their debut 2003 album The Trees Are Dead & Dried Out Wait for Something Wild.

Mikee explains “We have signed to Millennium Night, which is a new division of Snapper Music; they decided they would invent a new label just for us, we don’t fit in and we never felt the need to”.

Further updates from the studio will be revealed over the coming weeks.

Ahead of the release of their new studio album the band will head out on tour across the UK & Europe with Trivium.

Sikth are:

Pin – guitar

Dan Weller – guitar

Dan Foord – drums

James Leach – bass

Mikee W Goodman – vocals

Joe Rosser – Vocals

www.sikth.band

https://www.facebook.com/sikthofficial

https://twitter.com/sikthofficial

 

Steve Hackett – The Night Siren – Released 24th March Through InsideOut Music

Guitar virtuoso and rock legend, Steve Hackett (formerly of Genesis), releases his latest album The Night Siren on 24th March 2017 through InsideOut Music (Sony).  As implied in the title, The Night Siren is a wake-up call… the warning of a siren sounding in this era of strife and division.

The Night Siren showcases Steve’s incredible guitar playing as strongly as ever, along with regular Hackett collaborators and also musicians from several different countries who Steve invited to join him in celebrating multicultural diversity and unity. This includes singers from Israel and Palestine, who both actively campaign to bring Jewish and Arabic people together. There are also instrumentals from the USA and Iraq and a multiplicity of sounds, including the exotic strains of Indian sitar and Middle Eastern tar and oud, the ethnic beauty of the Peruvian charango and the haunting Celtic Uilleann pipes.

Steve is widely travelled, making friends everywhere he goes and has always embraced multicultural diversity.  In these times of unrest, he has been inspired to express his belief that the world needs more empathy and unity. His wish to involve a range of musical sounds, instruments, musicians and singers from different parts of the world is both a development of his eclectic approach to music and shows how people can be brought together, even from war torn regions.

Talking about his latest work, Steve says, “This latest waxing represents a bird’s eye view of the world of a musical migrant ignoring borders and celebrating our common ancestry with a unity of spirit, featuring musicians, singers and instruments from all over the world.  From territorial frontiers to walled-up gateways, boundaries often hold back the tide.  But while the night siren wails, music breaches all defences. To quote Plato, ‘When the music changes, the walls of the city shake’.”

The musical journey takes us from ‘Behind the Smoke’, focusing on the plight of refugees throughout the ages, to the penultimate track ‘West to East’ which reflects on the damage of war and the hope for a better world. From personal to universal, the themes celebrate the life force, breaking free from chains of repression.

The album features: Steve Hackett (guitar & vocals), Roger King (keyboards & programming), Nad Sylvan (vocals on Inca Terra), Rob Townsend (all things wind), Amanda Lehmann (vocals), Gary O’Toole (drums), and Benedict Fenner (additional keyboards & programming). Also featured are singers Kobi and Mira (Israeli and Palestinian), Nick D’Virgilio (drums) from the USA, Malik Mansurov (Tar) from Azerbaijan & Gulli Breim (drums & percussion) from Iceland. Additional musicians who add to the rich flavour of the album are Christine Townsend (violin & viola), Dick Driver (double bass), Troy Donockley (Celtic Uilleann) and Leslie Bennett (keyboards on The Gift).

Full Track Listing:

  1.      Behind the Smoke
  2.      Martian Sea
  3.      Fifty Miles from the North Pole
  4.      El Niño
  5.      Other Side of the Wall
  6.      Anything but Love
  7.      Inca Terra
  8.      In Another Life
  9.      In the Skeleton Gallery
  10.    West to East

Steve Hackett is returning with an exciting new show Genesis Revisited with Classic Hackett for a 15-date UK tour in April 2017.  Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the classic Genesis album Wind and Wuthering, Steve and his band will be performing several tracks from the album as well as fan favourites such as ‘The Musical Box’ and other Genesis numbers never performed before by Steve’s band including ‘Inside & Out,’  ‘One For The Vine’ and ‘Anyway’ as well as material from The Night Siren.

Tickets available from www.myticket.co.uk and venue box offices.   Steve onstage at 7.30pm.

www.hackettsongs.com

@hackettofficial

https://www.facebook.com/stevehackettofficial/

With Our Arms To The Sun Announce Pledge Music Campaign for New Album ‘Orenda’

Instrumental heavy rock band With Our Arms To The Sun have announced a pre-order ‘Pledge Music’ campaign for their fourth release ‘Orenda’ with a mooted release date of 21st April 2017. Pledgers can receive an immediate digital download, CD’s, Vinyl, limited edition artwork, merch, etc.

With Our Arms to the Sun is a rock band formed in the desert of Arizona. Their live shows are unique and emotional, bringing back the energy of the punk rock and grunge bands of the past who used to play to basements and art galleries packed full of kids. The music is cinematic and expressive with elements of conceptual album rock and modern electronics.

Orenda n. [aw-ren-duh]
1.           A supernatural force believed by the Iroquois Indians to be present, in varying degrees, in all objects or persons, and to be the spiritual force by which human accomplishment is attained or accounted for.

A dormant potential to create exists within all human beings. It unconsciously binds the species at large. Most people just never unlock it. With Our Arms To The Sun examine that precious and potent power on their 2016 full-length concept album, ‘Orenda’ [Fade To Silence Records]. Painting in hues of rock, alternative, and metal, their cinematic sound blankets a curious canvas of Arizona Desert, weaving together a sonic journey to self-actualization for the quartet—Josh Breckenridge [vocals, guitar], Joseph Leary [guitar, programming], Joseph Breckenridge [bass], and John McLucas [drums].

“Orenda is that hidden power inside all of us,” says Josh. “The character in the album is discovering it. You can’t really transcend your own ego, shadow, or bullshit unless you make a connection with what whatever that obstacle is inside of you, eliminate it, and move past it. That’s what the new music is about.”

The band arrived at this narrative following a whirlwind of touring behind 2014’s independently released ‘A Far Away Wonder’. Loudwire began championing the album very early on, spotlighting the underground group on an international scale. The site named ‘A Far Away Wonder’ one of the “20 Best Metal Albums of 2014” and “Tessellation” one of the “20 Best Metal Songs of 2014,” admitting to being “captivated at first listen.” As buzz grew, the group landed tours with the likes of virtuoso guitarist John 5 [Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson] and Mushroomhead in addition to joining Tool, Primus, and Coheed & Cambria at the Monster Mash Festival in Phoenix.  In early 2016, the group retreated to Los Angeles with a batch of demos and began pre-production on what would become ‘Orenda’ with legendary The Melvins founder Buzz Osborne.

“When we sat down with Buzz, it was a lot of refinement,” recalls Josh. “Having somebody who’s made a zillion albums listen to the ideas and give suggestions was invaluable. He’s a pretty brilliant dude, and he had some really wonderful ideas. We pieced it together from there.”

“Working with With Our Arms To The Sun was refreshing,” adds Buzz. “They were receptive to my ideas, which doesn’t always happen. They were incredibly hard workers, and I think the results speaks for themselves.”

Josh and his bandmates holed up in a rental house “in the middle of nowhere Arizona” to track the music. They emerged with the 10 songs comprising ‘Orenda’. The first single “Macrocosm – Prometheus” begins with a warbling moan reminiscent of Alien before a clean guitar takes hold. Propelled by artful percussion, the hazy six-string swell rises into thunderous distortion and an overpowering chant.

“It looks at the microcosm and macrocosm dichotomy,” he explains. “If you look at the universe and how huge it is, it’s this giant macrocosm. As human beings, we are a tiny microcosm of that macrocosm. Everything repeats itself in a beautiful outward pattern. The song is about the character coming to that realization he’s a piece of something bigger.”

Opener “Disdain” outlines the protagonist’s frustration under a gust of wind, typing, and ominous riff punctuated by Josh’s screams. “This guy is referencing a lot of the stupid shit he’s seeing around him in the world,” he continues. “I thought it would set the tone perfectly for someone who feels confused, disoriented, angry, and bitter.”

Everything culminates on “Homebound.” Amidst samples of loggers chopping down trees, the soundscape converges on one final melodic catharsis.

“That’s a conclusion of transcendence,” states Josh. “He makes an exodus off this planet and out of this world. We all agreed this was the perfect ending.”

Ultimately, ‘Orenda’ hints at something universal and essential.

“We wanted to create a record that was more than just background music or a cog-in-the-machine,” he leaves off. “You can wrap your brain around it. It’s about going on that ride together.”

Full details of the pledge-music campaign can be found here:

With Our Arms To The Sun – ‘Orenda’ – Pledge-Music

Here is a live version of ‘Disdain’ from the forthcoming album ‘Orenda’.

www.withourarmstothesun.com/

 

 

Brett Kull – Open Skies Exploding – New Solo Album from Echolyn Frontman

Brett Kull is a multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, producer, and engineer from the United States. He is best known for being a founding member of the band Echolyn, and long standing member of Grey Eye Glances. Brett is also an adjunct college instructor sharing his love for audio engineering and sound design.

For his third solo release comprised of 10 new tracks, ‘Open Skies Exploding’, Brett decided to start releasing two songs a week starting on the 24th of December 2016 and has written a blog to coincide with these releases. When all ten songs have been released I will write a review of the full album but, in the meantime, here are Brett’s first three blogs…

Open Skies Exploding 1st Release – ‘My House is Loud’ and ‘Three Walls’

Here is the companion video for Three Walls:

Open Skies Exploding 2nd Release – ‘Hard Dying Time’ and ‘Dublin Rooftops’

Open Skies Exploding 3rd Release – ‘Railroad Self’ and ‘Punch of the Day’

Check out the video for ‘Railroad Self’ – Live at Chateau Fornance – 5 Jan 2017 here:

You can download the up-to-date songs from bandcamp here:

Open Skies Exploding – bandcamp

Brett is heading to England for a tour with Francis Dunnery, here it is in his own words:

“Speaking of a wild ride, I’m headed to England next week for a mini tour of sorts with my friend Francis Dunnery, but I’ll try and have a couple songs in the oven, ready to go to help keep our hearts and bellies warm during my cold absence. Wait a minute, oh right, I’m starting my master’s degree this week! Shyte, I forgot!! I need to tell my instructors I’ll be AWOL for the first classes. Thanks for the reminder! Damn, one more thing to put on the list… and less time to drink wine!

But seriously, If any of you are in close proximity to ancient Britannia (during the dates below) feel free to come out and say hello. I’ve been hired to sing a hell-of-a lot, play a few keyboards, and even less guitar. It’s a good gig with an amazing songwriter and musical force of nature – Mr. Dunnery. The band is amazing and we walk the edge of complete catastrophe and utter brilliance. You wont be able to turn away! Here are the dates and where you can get tickets. Hope to share a pint with some of you… well, I’ll have my own pint and you’ll have yours.

Cheers!

Brett”

Francis Dunnery – Vampires 2017 

 Friday, January 20th – Club Academy Manchester

http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/event/256899

 Saturday, January 21st – The Slade Rooms, Wolverhampton

http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/event/256903

 Sunday, January 22nd – Bush Hall, London.

http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/event/256881

 

 

 

Canadian Melodic Technical Proggers Slyde Return With Their New EP ‘Back Again’!

After a 2-year hiatus, Canadian melodic technical proggers Slyde return with their new EP ‘Back Again’ (February 17). Four tracks of virtuosic contrapuntal songwriting exploring the relationship between environmentalism and sci-fi, ‘Back Again’ is a fantastically entertaining listen. For fans of Haken, Coheed and Cambria, Rush, Dream Theater, etc, Slyde‘s music is driven by the clean vocals of frontman Nathan Da Silva and the powering keyboards of Sarah Westbrook; a beguiling fourpiece with an impressive return to form.

Before their hiatus, Slyde played over 150 shows on the Eastern Canadian circuit, including shows with Protest the Hero and at Canadian Music Week (2013), IndieWeek (2011-2013), and Wacken Metal Battle (2013).

The First single from the EP is available to purchase now at bandcamp:

Buy ‘Back Again’ from Slyde’s bandcamp page

Check out a live performance of the single below:

Tim Bowness Releases Lyric Video For ‘You Wanted To Be Seen’ – Pre-order Links For New Album.

Tim Bowness has released a lyric video for You Wanted To Be Seen, the first single to be taken from his superb new album ‘Lost In The Ghost Light’, due to be released on February 17th via InsideOut Music.

‘Lost In The Ghost Light’ is a concept album revolving around the onstage and backstage reflections of a fictional classic rock musician in the twilight of his career. Ranging from the hypnotic opener Worlds Of Yesterday to the wistful climax of Distant Summers, via the thrilling rage of Kill The Pain That’s Killing You and the orchestral expanse of You’ll Be The Silence, the album features some stunning solos and harmonically rich compositions that represent Bowness’s most musically ambitious work to date.

Bowness utilises a core band comprising Stephen Bennett (Henry Fool), Colin Edwin (Porcupine Tree), Bruce Soord (The Pineapple Thief), Hux Nettermalm (Paatos) and Andrew Booker (Sanguine Hum), and is also joined by guests including Kit Watkins (Happy The Man/Camel), Steve Bingham (No-Man) and the legendary Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull). Andrew Keeling (Robert Fripp/Hilliard Ensemble/Evelyn Glennie) arranges for string quartet and flute on three of the album’s songs.

‘Lost In The Ghost Light’ can be pre-ordered at the following links:

Burning Shed: CD/DVD, limited gold LP+CD, black LP+CD: https://www.burningshed.com/store/noman/
Amazon: http://smarturl.it/TBownessLITGLAma

Pre-order the digital album and immediately get the single ‘You Wanted To Be Seen’:
iTunes: http://smarturl.it/TBownessLITGLiTunes
AmazonMP3: http://smarturl.it/TBownessLITGLAmaMP3

Threshold announce new tour dates + album title!

After ten successful years with the label Nuclear Blast, British progressive protagonists THRESHOLD have signed a new contract and extended their partnership with the label. Furthermore, they have also announced plans for their next release. THRESHOLD are currently recording their 11th masterpiece at Thin Ice Studios in England, a new concept album that will be called ‘Legends Of The Shires’. It is being produced by Karl Groom and Richard West and it’s scheduled to be released later this year. More information will be revealed soon.

But that’s not enough:the band is also announcing the dates for the ‘Legends Of The Shires’-Tour 2017 where you’ll be able to fully experience songs from the new album on stage! This European Tour includes a one-off UK date at London’s O2 Islington Academy on 10th December.
Tickets on-sale now and available here:
http://www.ticketweb.co.uk/event/YDH1012T?brand=o2academyislington&camefrom=AMG_ISLINGTON_thhld

Richard West comments: “It’s great to be announcing these tour dates so soon, we can’t wait to get on the road and perform for you. Our new album is coming together perfectly, we’ve got a lot of strong material so it might be our longest one yet.”

Catch THRESHOLD live here:
Legends Of The Shires -Tour 2017
(presented by ‘Rock Hard’, ‘Eclipsed’, ‘Rock It!’, ‘Blast!’ and ‘Wacken Radio’)
+ Special Guests
28.11.  NL       Bosuil – Weert
29.11.  GER     Hamburg – Markthalle
30.11.  GER     Berlin – Lido
01.12.  GER     Aschaffenburg – Colos Saal
02.12.  GER     München – Feierwerk
03.12.  CH       Pratteln – Z7
05.12.  GER     Stuttgart – Club Cann
06.12.  GER     Hannover – Musikzentrum
07.12.  BEL      Kortrijk – De Kreun
08.12.  GER     Essen – Turock
09.12.  NL       Zoetermeer – Boerderij
10.12.  UK       London – O2 Islington Academy

The last record of the band was their live album ‘European Journey’, which was recorded during the November 2014 ‘For The Journey’ tour and consists of 15 live tracks.

Order the live CD here with a signed insert:  http://bit.ly/ThresholdSigned

More on ‘European Journey’:
‘Watchtower On The Moon’ official live video: https://youtu.be/s8QN-lU4QbI
‘Lost In Your Memory’ official video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrINbxutmH0

Steve Hackett: The Night Siren – New Album

Guitar virtuoso and rock legend, Steve Hackett (formerly of Genesis), releases his latest album The Night Siren on 24th March 2017 through InsideOut Music (Sony).  As implied in the title, The Night Siren is a wake-up call… the warning of a siren sounding in this era of strife and division.

‘The Night Siren’ showcases Steve’s incredible guitar as strongly as ever, along with musicians from several different countries who Steve invited to join him in celebrating multicultural diversity and unity.  This includes singers from Israel and Palestine, who both actively campaign to bring Jewish and Arabic people together.  There are also instrumentals from the USA and Iraq and a multiplicity of sounds, including the exotic strains of Indian sitar and Middle Eastern tar and oud, the ethnic beauty of the Peruvian charango and the haunting Celtic Uilleann pipes.

Steve is widely travelled, making friends everywhere he goes and has always embraced multicultural diversity.  In these times of unrest, he has been inspired to express his belief that the world needs more empathy and unity.  His wish to involve a range of musical sounds, instruments, musicians and singers from different parts of the world is both a development of his eclectic approach to music and shows how people can be brought together, even from war torn regions.

Talking about his latest work, Steve says, “This latest waxing represents a bird’s eye view of the world of a musical migrant ignoring borders and celebrating our common ancestry with a unity of spirit, featuring musicians, singers and instruments from all over the world.  From territorial frontiers to walled-up gateways, boundaries often hold back the tide.  But while the night siren wails, music breaches all defences. To quote Plato, ‘When the music changes, the walls of the city shake’.”

 The musical journey takes us from ‘Behind the Smoke’, focusing on the plight of refugees throughout the ages, to the penultimate track ‘West to East’ which reflects on the damage of war and the hope for a better world. From personal to universal, the themes celebrate the life force, breaking free from chains of repression.

Full Track Listing:-

  1.      Behind the Smoke
  2.      Martian Sea
  3.      Fifty Miles from the North Pole
  4.      El Niño
  5.      Other Side of the Wall
  6.      Anything but Love
  7.      Inca Terra
  8.      In Another Life
  9.      In the Skeleton Gallery
  10.    West to East
  11.    The Gift

In addition to singers Kobi and Mira (Israeli and Palestinian), also featured on the album are Nick D’Virgilio (drums) from the USA, Malik Mansurov (Tar) from Azerbaijan & Gulli Breim (drums & percussion) from Iceland, along with regular Hackett collaborators: Roger King, Nad Sylvan, Gary O’Toole, Rob Townsend and Amanda Lehmann.  Additional musicians who add to the rich flavour of the album are Christine Townsend (violin & viola), Dick Driver (double bass) and Troy Donockley (Celtic Uilleann).

Steve Hackett is returning with an exciting new show Genesis Revisited with Classic Hackett for a 15 date UK tour in April 2017.  Celebrating the 40th anniversary of the classic Genesis album Wind and Wuthering, Steve and his band will be performing several tracks from the album as well as fan favourites such as ‘The Musical Box’ and other Genesis numbers never performed before by Steve’s band including ‘Inside & Out,’ ‘One For The Vine’ and ‘Anyway’ as well as material from The Night Siren.

 

Tickets available from www.myticket.co.uk

‘The Night Siren’ will be released through Inside Out Music on 24th March in the following formats:

Special Edition CD/Blu-Ray Mediabook featuring 5.1 surround sound mix & making of documentary: 88985410452

Standard Jewel case CD: 88985410462

Gatefold black 2LP vinyl + CD: 88985410471

Digital Download

www.hackettsongs.com

@hackettofficial

https://www.facebook.com/stevehackettofficial/

 

Hibernal Announce New Album – The Dark Of The City

Mark Healy, the man behind the incredible sci-fi worlds of the Hibernal music project, has announced details of the latest album that is to be released on January 12th 2017.

Mark Healy is an author of sci-fi fiction. His music project Hibernal interweaves these sci-fi stories with instrumental music to tell a compelling storyline that unfolds throughout the course of the album.

The new record, ‘The Dark Of The City’, is based around the story of a cop who undertakes a relentless search for the creature that killed her partner. This new collection of 10 tracks follows on from his three previous releases, 2013’s ‘The Machine’, 2014’s ‘Replacements’ and ‘After The Winter’, released in April of last year.

I had this to say about ‘After The Winter’:

“Mark Healy’s cinematic and evocative soundscapes waft over a post-apocalyptic spoken word storyline to deliver an immensely visceral listening experience.”

You can pre-order ‘The Dark Of The City’ now and get a download of the title track immediately.

Pre-order here

Check out the video for the title track below:

Tim Bowness To Release New album, Lost In The Ghost Light, In February

tim-bowness-lost-in-the-ghost-light

Tim Bowness will release his fourth solo album, ‘Lost In The Ghost Light’, through InsideOut on February 17.

A concept album revolving around the onstage and backstage reflections of a fictional classic rock musician in the twilight of his career. Ranging from the hypnotic opener Worlds Of Yesterday to the wistful climax of Distant Summers, via the thrilling rage of Kill The Pain That’s Killing You and the orchestral expanse of You’ll Be The Silence, the album features some stunning solos and harmonically rich compositions that represent Bowness’s most musically ambitious work to date.

Bowness utilises a core band comprising Stephen Bennett (Henry Fool), Colin Edwin (Porcupine Tree), Bruce Soord (The Pineapple Thief), Hux Nettermalm (Paatos) and Andrew Booker (Sanguine Hum), and is also joined by guests including Kit Watkins (Happy The Man/Camel), Steve Bingham (No-Man) and the legendary Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull). Andrew Keeling (Robert Fripp/Hilliard Ensemble/Evelyn Glennie) arranges for string quartet and flute on three of the album’s songs.

When I spoke to Tim about the new album a month or so ago,  he said,

“The new album’s just been finished. We’re looking at a mid-February release. In some ways, it is quite a departure. There are lots of flutes on it and due to the nature of ‘the concept’, it’s definitely the most traditionally Progressive album I’ve made. That said, it still sounds a lot like me.”

The album is now available to pre-order from Burning Shed, including an exclusive hand numbered gold vinyl LP + CD limited to 400 copies. All orders will receive a signed artwork postcard.