Tag Archive: Dream Theater

The Omega Experiment – The Omega Experiment

Filed Under: Reviews

Feb.06, 2012

The Omega Experiment

01. Gift
02. Stimulus
03. Motion
04. Tranquility
05. Furor
06. Bliss
07. Karma
08. Terminus
09. Paramount

[02/14/12]
[Self-Released]

Every now and then I come across a band so great that I can’t help but wonder why any label would pass on the opportunity to have the act a part of their roster. In the case of The Omega Experiment, I have never before been so absolutely baffled. I don’t know what’s more shocking; the fact that The Omega Experiment’s self titled debut album wasn’t picked up by a label or that—for a debut album produced and released completely DIY—the quality of every aspect of this release is so top-shelf. Do not take it lightly when I say that The Omega Experiment is the best independent progressive metal album I’ve heard in recent memory.

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Tags: Devin Townsend, Dream Theater, Journey, Queensrÿche, Styx, TesseracT, The Omega Experiment

Hey! Listen To Roma Ivakov!

Filed Under: Listen To This!, Video

Feb.01, 2012

Roma Ivakov is an Australian guitarist who puts out phenomenal solo work that has elements of shred and djent. To me, he sounds like John Petrucci of Dream Theater meets Meshuggah. Yes, that is a massive compliment, and he deserves it. He already has an album out titled Golden Stellar Pyramid, which you can stream and purchase here. The playing and composition is stellar, and I’m even more excited for his upcoming album! From what I understand, some tracks on the new album might have vocals too. His untitled album should be coming out soon, according to his Facebook page. Here are some videos of him playing some new songs that will be on the new album.

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Tags: Dream Theater, John Petrucci, Meshuggah, Roma Ivakov

Dream Theater Build Up, Break Down Lyric Video Conventions

Filed Under: Video

Jan.27, 2012

Well, not really. But Dream Theater‘s lyric video for ‘Build Me Up, Break Me Down’ from their latest album A Dramatic Turn of Events is pretty good. Normally, lyric videos are just the lyrics to the song framed with a few effects to some imagery, but this one goes a little bit extra on the chorus. The song isn’t the best one on the album, but I guess it’s the most radio-friendly one. Check it out!

- NT

Tags: Dream Theater

Chris Letchford of Scale the Summit: The Heavy Blog Is Heavy Interview

Filed Under: Interviews

Dec.23, 2011

Photo by Harrison Letchford

Yesterday we posted our interview of Last Chance To Reason, but it isn’t the only band we talked to this week. On the very same Protest the Hero headlining tour (which ended last night), we spoke to Chris Letchford of the instrumental progressive rock/metal band Scale The Summit about instrumental music, their latest album The Collective, and the past couple of years on the road.

You guys played phenomenal tonight.

Awesome!

This was the first time I’ve seen you guys live, but I’ve been a fan for a while. Something I’ve always wanted to know; your songs sound very cinematic, like they invoke these images of landscapes and everything with song titles like “The Great Plains” and “Whales.” Do you go into it as if you want to write a song about whales or do you apply the title after the fact?

Usually after the fact. Yeah, cause usually when we write, we’ll finish a song and then we kind of sit back and listen to kind of visualize imagery from all the moods and whatnot that’s going on in the song. Yeah, it’s definitely afterwards, for sure.

Instrumental music seems to have a better market now than it did when you first started. That could be because of technology and everything, but how do you see the more popularity of instrumental music?

You’re definitely right. It’s not that it has more of a market, I think there’s more people are accepting of it, but that’s because instrumental bands are actually touring now, you know? Because there’s been instrumental forever, but it’s just the only people touring instrumental were like Vai and Satriani and a little bit of Petrucci. [Liquid Tension Experiment] never actually physically toured, you know? So they’ve been around since the late 90s or whatever. But yeah, with us, Animals as Leaders, Pelican, Russian Circles and all those bands actually touring, it’s easier for us to get instrumental music out there. So people always say, “Oh, you know instrumental is getting popular now.” It’s like, yeah, more in the touring world, but you know it’s obviously been around forever, it’s just now there are actually bands that are going out there and touring.

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Tags: Animals As Leaders, Between The Buried and Me, Chris Letchford, Cynic, Devin Townsend, Dream Theater, Joe Satriani, John Petrucci, Last Chance To Reason, Liquid Tension Experiment, pelican, Protest the Hero, Russian Circles, Scale The Summit, Steve Vai

Corelia: The Cut Guest Interview!

Filed Under: Interviews

Dec.09, 2011

“The Cut? Wait, what is that?!”

The Cut is a student-ran magazine at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. Among their ranks is resident metalhead and admin Dan Curhan, regular HBIH reader and commenter. While The Cut is a music rag of sorts, their focus isn’t really the same as ours; while Dan runs a monthly metal column, the overall scope is more broad and all-encompassing. Not too long ago, Dan hit up Heavy Blog favorites Corelia for an interview and thought it appropriate for us to cross-post. We were more than happy to oblige! Read Dan’s interview with guitarist Chris Dower, bassist Adrian Alperstein, and drummer Clayton Pratt below, where they discuss their excellent new EP Nostalgia and vocalist Ryan Devlin’s new position in The Human Abstract.

The Cut: You guys have just recorded and released your EP, and you did that all yourselves, right?

Chris Dower: Yeah, we pretty much did everything ourselves. The only we didn’t really do ourselves was the final mastering. The guy who mastered it, his name is Luke Martin, he’s from the UK. Um, cool guy. Never really talked to him, just over Facebook, but he offered to master the EP for free. So we called him up.

The Cut: Nice! So did you buy all your equipment? Or did you rent it? Or..?

CD: Well, Ryan [Borrell, the other guitar player] and I both own Axe-Fxs, so that makes recording the guitar pretty easy. Other than that, we just used Superior Drummer for the drums, and vocals…

Clayton Pratt: Yeah, vocals we pretty much did the same thing. Cheap stuff, we used a [PreSonus] FireBox, which is a lower model of a Firepod, which we used for the interface and the preamp for the mic. The mic we used was an SM-7b, and going into Cubase, and yeah, that’s it. That’s all we use.

The Cut: Nothing too fancy, but it came out really good.

CD: Yeah, we were surprised. We were kinda wary – we started recording the EP and we were like “uhh how’s this gonna turn out? we’re not really experienced with self recording.” It was painful, but it turned out really well, I think.

CP: Yeah, it took a lot of extra time making, like, that kind of stuff sound professional. We just took the extra time to make it sound professional.

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Tags: 3, Between The Buried and Me, Corelia, Dream Theater, Opeth, Periphery, Protest the Hero, Sikth, The Human Abstract

Gojira Signs To Roadrunner Records; Studio Video Now Available

Filed Under: General News, Upcoming releases, Video

Nov.11, 2011

So everyone’s been all super excited as of late because Gojira are in New York recording their new album. Not only that, but they’re now signed to the biggest metal and hard rock label around, Roadrunner Records. They’re letting fans in on the action by opening their official YouTube account and posting the first studio video of them in the studio, seen above.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

“We are so stoked to walk with the legendary Roadrunner,” Joe said about the new partnership. “We discovered Sepultura, Machine Head, Death, Fear Factory and so many other great bands thanks to these guys. Roadrunner has been a great source of inspiration for us as metal fans. It’s an honor to be part of this family today as a band. We feel we’ll get the right support at the right moment in our career. We cannot wait to release our new record and get back on the road.”

A lot of people are anxious over this new business relationship, but I don’t really see any harm in it. Roadrunner’s roster has many fantastic acts who make the albums they want to without issue, like Dream Theater, Opeth, and Porcupine Tree. They also signed Mastodon and Periphery for distribution outside of North America. Everything’s going to be just fine on this front. For those who aren’t keeping count, we should be getting a new Gojira album as well as their star-studded Sea Shepherd EP (Brent Hinds, Randy Blythe, Max Cavalera, Frederik Thordendal, and Devin Townsend) in the next year. This is exciting! We’ll have more release information as its given.

- JR

Tags: Dream Theater, Gojira, Mastodon, Opeth, Porcupine Tree, Roadrunner Records, Sea Shepherd

Leprous – Bilateral

Filed Under: Reviews

Nov.08, 2011

Leprous

Bilateral

01. Bilateral
02. Forced Entry
03. Restless
04. Thorn
05. Mb. Indifferentia
06. Waste of Air
07. Mediocrity Wins
08. Cryptogenic Desires
09. Acquired Taste
10. Painful Detour

[08/23/11]
[Inside Out]

Leprous are a very interesting band. While they’ve had stylistic changes over the years, the style they’ve reached at `Bilateral` is definitely where they sound most comfortable. If you wonder what they sound like, it’s a bit difficult to explain, but I’ll try. Try taking Dream Theater, adding haunting characteristics of Opeth, sprinkling in some of Frank Zappa‘s craziness, adding a very Levi/Werstler style of guitar, and adding some of Devin Townsend Project‘s Deconstruction stylings, you’ll have the right mix. Now, if those names made your stomach turn with disgust, this album is obviously not for you. But if you’re a regular reader of ours, most of these names probably made you jump with excitement. Well then, hop in and experience this crazy journey with me.

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Tags: Devin Townsend, Devin Townsend Project, Dream Theater, Ihsahn, John Petrucci, Leprous, Levi/Werstler, Opeth, zappa

Mark Holcomb of Haunted Shores Now A Full-Time Periphery Guitarist

Filed Under: General News

Oct.18, 2011

Misha and Mark (via Mayones Guitars)

Ever since the departure of “arms of steel” Alex Bois from Periphery, Haunted Shores guitarist Mark Holcomb has been on tour with the group as a fill in. We all knew where this was going to lead, as Mark and Periphery have been friends and collaborators for years. Finally, it is official — Mark Holcomb is now a full member of Periphery. Great success!

Here’s an array of quotes!

Misha Mansoor states: “We are happy to announce that Mark Holcomb (Haunted Shores) will be joining the Periphery ranks as a full time guitarist! He toured with with us our headlining run of Australia, our Frak The Gods US headliner and our 2 shows opening for Dream Theater, and we feel that we have found a perfect fit for us both live and in the studio. We are extremely excited to have him on board, and cant wait to show you all the cool new music we have been working on together! Since we made arrangements for the tour before Mark was inducted, our good friend Nolly (Red Seas Fire) will be filling in on the European tour opening for Dream Theater. However that will be the last tour we do with a fill-in guitarist, as Mark will join on full time after that!”

Thomas Murphy (bass) states: “The most important thing about a band is the chemistry between its members. We’ve all known Mark for years and are very proud to announce him as our newest member. Not only is he an amazing writer and guitarist, but also an amazing person. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for the band now that he has joined.”

Mark Holcomb further comments: “I couldn’t be more excited as not only have these guys been great friends of mine for a long time, but I consider every last one of them musical siblings in a sense. Each of us brings something different to the table and I can’t wait to see what we can accomplish.”

If for some reason you are not familiar with Mark’s body of work and have some sort of ill-placed doubts, behold:

Perfect fit for Periphery. They couldn’t have found a better replacement for Alex! So congrats go out to Mark; hope you kill it out there!

After the jump, check out the tour dates for their 2012 tour with Dream Theater!

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Tags: Dream Theater, Haunted Shores, Mark Holcomb, Periphery, Red Seas Fire

3 – The Ghost You Gave To Me

Filed Under: Reviews

Oct.11, 2011

3 The Ghost You Gave To Me

01. Sirenum Scopuli
02. React
03. Sparrow
04. High Times
05. Numbers
06. On With The Sun
07. The Ghost You Gave To Me
08. Pretty
09. Afterglow
10. It’s Alive
11. Only Child
12. The Barrier

[10/11/11]
[Metal Blade]

This is a band that I was just recently exposed to. Like most metal fans I’m constantly seeking out new musical endeavors and possibilities, and I was more than pleased when I first heard the title track from 3’s The Ghost You Gave To Me a few weeks ago over at Metalsucks, and whilst I was excited to hear this record, it’s not exactly what I was hoping for.

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Tags: 3, Dream Theater, James Labrie, Joey Eppard, Metal Blade Records, The Beatles, The Ghost You Gave To Me

The Odious – That Night A Forest Grew

Filed Under: Reviews

Oct.03, 2011

The Odious

That Night A Forest Grew

01. Entmoot
02. Threads
03. Contemplating Utopia
04. Last Night A Forest Grew (Part One)
05. Last Night A Forest Grew (Part Two)

[04/02/11]
[Self-Released]

Sometimes you come across some music that is so weird and intriguing that you can’t listen to something else for days. It slowly lays its roots down in you, and one day you wake up to see it has become a forest inside you. Yes, this is a bad allusion to the EP’s name, but it’s also very true. The Odious are an unsigned progressive death metal band from Portland. I’ve heard them described as “The Faceless with waaay more acid”, which is quite true. But there’s also elements of Between The Buried And Me and The Contortionist in there. Are you salivating already? Well, let me explain better, for those who can’t picture it. There are slow and mellow jazzy clean passages, technical spazz-outs, off-time beats aplenty, ragtime beats, stoner/sludge sections and other experimental bits. And it’s all done very elegantly. Of course, it’s a concept album, but you should have been able to tell that from the fact that I’m reviewing it.

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Tags: Between The Buried and Me, Dream Theater, Opeth, The Contortionist, The Faceless, The Odious