by Blake | Mar 7, 2017 | Prog Report
So much news is surrounding the Neal Morse Band these days, from the recent success of The Similitude of a Dream album and tour, to the announcement of Morsefest 2017, and now in between comes the release of the live set from Morsefest 2015, due out on March 24th, 2017. This, the 2nd Morsefest weekend event, took place in September of 2015, less than a year after the first one. This live set, which comes in CD/DVD and Blu-Ray, contains music and footage from both nights where the band performed 2 of Neal Morse’s solo album, ‘?’ and ‘Sola Scriptura’, along with a number of extra tracks from Neal’s entire career. This is as good a collection of live footage and progressive rock any fan could imagine. With over 5 hours of music, just watching this can leave you exhausted. It is unbelievable to imagine how these musicians pulled this much off in just 2 nights.
I was lucky to spend that weekend there and wrote a lengthy review of the weekend (read the Morsefest 2015 review here), so I will not recount all the songs and surprises, but suffice it to say it was nothing like I had experienced musically, until of course Morsefest 2016, but that’s another article. One thing that you can count on with releases from Neal Morse and Radiant Records, is they give you every bit they can. The CD/DVD package comes with 6 discs, music from both nights and an hour behind the scenes documentary. The visuals are spectacular and the sound, courtesy of the always impressive Rich Mouser, is flawless. Most live DVDs have a few cameras, but the production here is a step beyond even that; nothing is missed, and it looks brilliant. Of course, musically, the band are as good as always.
This is a collection for the die-hard fan. There are many obscure album cuts and b-sides performed from Neal’s time with Spock’s Beard, his early solo career and even a crazy version of MacArthur Park, from The Grand Experiment album. But the highlight is definitely the end of the second night where Neal’s old Spock’s Beard bandmate, Nick D’Virgilio, joined the band for “At the End of the Day” on drums and then “Wind at My Back” on vocals. For fans there, it might as well have been McCartney and Lennon reuniting. As if that wasn’t enough, the band then followed that with a 20 minute performance of The Whirlwind from Transatlantic.
You get the idea. It’s a lot of music. Credit to all who were involved, from the musicians to the people putting the production together. Regardless of how you view Neal’s music, there is no denying the quality of what is presented here. So sit back, watch, listen, and enjoy this Prog extravaganza from some of the best musicians on the planet, performing some incredible music the way it was meant to be performed.
Video Disc One:
1 – Intro (1:56)
2 – The Call (10:25)
3 – The Grand Experiment (7:36)
4 – Go the Way You Go (14:01)
5 – MacArthur Park (13:36)
6 – A Whole ‘Nother Trip (24:14)
7 – New Jerusalem (8:33)
8 – Question Mark Intro (3:16)
9 – Temple of The Living God (6:35)
10 – Another World (2:16)
11- The Outsider ( 2:52)
12 – Sweet Elation (2:46)
13 – In the Fire (8:02)
14 – Solid As the Sun (7:57)
15 – The Glory of The Lord (3:05)
16 – Outside Looking In (5:12)
17 – 12 (7:00)
18 – Entrance (6:14)
19 – Inside His Presence (7:16)
20 – The Temple Of the Living God Reprise
Video Disc Two:
1 – Intro (2:06)
2 – The Door (34:28)
3 – The Conflict (27:55)
4 – My Heart (5:42)
5 – The Conclusion (17:34)
6 – Waterfall (7:56)
7 – At the End of the Day (17:07)
8 – Wind at My Back (7:02)
9 – Whirlwind Medley ( 16:37)
10 -Thank You’s (7:17)
Additional
Making-of Documentary (1:03)
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by Blake | Mar 7, 2017 | Prog Report
Rikard Sjöblom, driving force behind the now disbanded group Beardfish, is now set to release a new album with his solo project Gungfly. The new album will be released on InsideOutMusic on May 19th, 2017 and is titled ‘On Her Journey To The Sun’.
Rikard had this to say: “Gungfly was born out of necessity, songs came to life whenever there was downtime with Beardfish or if a song didn’t quite fit within Beardfish’s (otherwise quite broad and eclectic) frame of styles. I basically started recording songs, mainly pop-oriented material, but being the type of songwriter and musician I am, some prog slipped through the radar as well. With the break-up of Beardfish all of the prog-related material I write needed to go somewhere and Gungfly was ready and able for this step!”
Watch a teaser for the album here:
“I recorded what was to become the first album between 2007 – 2008 and it was released in 2009. The name Gungfly is a Swedish word meaning unsecure ground, and it came from a novel I read where it was used to describe that someone didn’t have grounds to back up their statements, so I liked it and chose to call the project that!” Rikard continues: “I’ve always been writing and recording lots of music and when I formed the live band to perform these songs for the first time I got to pick some of my oldest friends to play with and thankfully they wanted to be part of it! Petter and Rasmus Diamant (yes, they’re brothers) on drums and bass have always been the backbone foundation in this line-up and sometimes we actually do gigs as the Gungfly trio. Sverker Magnusson has been behind the keys since the start and was recently joined by Martin Borgh too to be able to cover all of the keyboard work on the albums, so sometimes we do three keyboard players on stage at the same time! This is made possible by the fact that guitarist David Zackrisson (Beardfish) is in the band as well. Me then? I do what I’ve always done; sing, play guitars and a bunch of vintage keyboards (mainly Hammond organ) – and I have lots of fun.”
Rikard Sjöblom is perhaps best known as the multi-instrumentalist frontman of Beardfish, who established themselves as one of the most consistently brilliant modern-day progressive rock bands over the course of eight studio albums. In recent years, he has also become known for his work with English progressive collective Big Big Train, playing live with them as well as performing on their 2016 album ‘Folklore’. That year also marked the release of his most recent solo album under his own name, ‘The Unbendable Sleep’.
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by Blake | Mar 6, 2017 | Prog Report
Voyager have just revealed the first video from their upcoming 6th album ‘Ghost Mile’, which is due out May 13th. The album comes as a result of a Pledge Music campaign, Currently the campaign is still running so fans can pre-order the new album and receive exclusive news and merchandise from the band. The track, “Ascension” find the band in pure form coming off their highly successful “V” album. You can check out the new song here:
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by Blake | Mar 4, 2017 | Prog Report
Concert: Big Wreck, March 3rd, 2017
Venue: Gramercy Theatre in New York City
20 years ago, Big Wreck were newcomers to the Rock scene with an impressive debut album ‘In Loving Memory Of’ and a rock radio hit with “The Oaf”. They toured North America as the opening act for Dream Theater for their ‘Falling Into Infinity’ tour. Despite the early success of the band, Big Wreck disbanded shortly after their second album as leader, and singer/guitarist, Ian Thornley built up a nice career in his home of Canada over the next 15 years. Somehow unexpectedly, the group resurfaced in 2012 and has since been on a continuing upward trend, releasing 3 spectacular albums, ‘Albatross’, ‘Ghosts’, and most recently, ‘Grace Street’, even hitting the top 5 in Canada. Now 20 years later, the group returned for their first show in NY since they opened for Dream Theater, as was noted by a surprising many Prog fans in the audience. We even witnessed a Haken shirt in the crowd.
Despite the chilly weather hitting NY that evening, the sold out crowd at NY’s legendary Gramercy Theatre gave a rousing applause as the band took stage promptly at 9pm and opened the show with the first single from ‘Grace Street’, “One More Piece of Me”. The rock radio track was a solid opener and got the crowd moving as did the pounding second track, “I Digress”, with a highlight dual guitar solo revving up the audience at the end. It was the immediate guitar riff for “That Song” from their debut that really set things ablaze. The entire audience sang every word, even overpowering the final phrases of the song as the music cut out to allow Thornley to end the song. The singer was so taken aback by the response, he paused and was visibly moved by the moment, claiming they had not expected such a response upon their return to the city.
From there the band ripped through a mix of songs from the last 3 albums. Highlights included the extended version of the groovy “A Speedy Recovery” from the new album, where drummer Chuck Keeping kept up a killer beat, the smash “Ghosts”, which featured a bass solo from the excellent Dave McMillan who threw in a few Star Wars references, and the dancy “You Don’t Even Know”, led off by original guitarist Brian Doherty, who hails from NY.
The last few songs of the show kicked off with the powerful “Albatross” and then a few songs from the debut album. The band closed out the set with the brilliant “Blown Wide Open”. As the band left the stage, the audience chanted the chorus “Blown Wide Open!”, “Blown Wide Open!”, “Blown Wide Open!”, repeatedly for 5 minutes until the band returned, again shocking the band. The group closed out with a new song “Digging In” and their biggest hit “The Oaf”, leaving the fans in awe and thrilled by the wonderful show put on by this fantastic group.
For fans of any type of rock music, Prog, or otherwise, Big Wreck are a joy to watch and listen to. The playing is flawless, the writing entertaining, and the performances extraordinary. Thornley’s powerful vocals are only topped by his top level guitar work, which is as good as you’ll find. Let’s hope this band is able to do a full US tour soon, because as was seen here, there is a fan base dying to see them again, and before another 20 years.
http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/big-wreck/2017/the-gramercy-theatre-new-york-ny-5bf9839c.html
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by Blake | Mar 3, 2017 | Prog Report
The Morsefest 2015 live DVD/Blu-Ray set comes out later this month on March 24th and now there is a new clip from the set. One of the suprises of that weekend in Nashville was former Spock’s Beard drummer and singer Nick D’Virgilio showing up to perform two encore songs with Neal Morse and the band, “At the End of the Day” and “Wind at my Back”. See the video for “Wind at my Back” here.
Details for Morsefest 2017 were recently revealed and will take place Sept 1-2, 2017.
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by Blake | Mar 2, 2017 | Prog Report
As if he wasn’t in enough bands, it looks like Mike Portnoy is about to revisit his roots by forming yet another band, this time a progressive metal supergroup. Portnoy posted an image on his Facebook page yesterday, March 1st, behind a large drum kit, with the hashtag #progmetalsupergroup and the message:
“Hmmmm….what have we here??
I’m in LA recording an album with something NEW…
Sorry, this is all you’re gonna get outta me on this for a while…More will be revealed at a later date…stay tuned!
We have no other details at the moment, but this looks like it could be another killer project by Mr. Portnoy.
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