Looked up a couple of my favorite bands today to see if there was any news and Lo and Behold…

Porcupine Tree is releasing an EP in 2008 of material recorded at the same time as the 2007 album “Fear of a Blank Planet”.  FOABP featured guitar work by guests Robert Fripp (King Crimson) and Alex Lifeson (Rush).  The new EP, “Nil Recurring“, features additional work by Fripp and reportedly clocks in at about half an hour, equating to 4 new songs.  The band is releasing a special version of the EP in a limited run of 5000 in October exclusively from their online store.  Now, if you haven’t heard of Porcupine Tree, odds are you have at least heard “Lazarus” and possibly “Shallow” from their previous album “Deadwing”.  Those 2 songs have shown up pretty often in pop culture in the past couple years.  Take a listen to the samples on iTunes and I’d be willing to bet they sound familiar. 

But not because Porcupine Tree is an average sounding band.  That is definitely not the case.  The band is most often categorized as Prog Rock or Neo-Prog perhaps by default since some of the song lengths fit the prog scene and they really don’t fit in anywhere else.  If you know me very well, you know I LOVE Prog Rock, but Porcupine Tree has been weird for me.  I almost don’t want to like them but I just can’t help it.  The thing is, a defining mark of Prog is an attitude of optimism, or positive energy.  This is so not true of Porcupine Tree.  Frontman Steven Wilson voices some disturbing themes in his songs, but fortunately the power chords and hypnotic melodies hide a lot of them…  For instance, the album “In Absentia” was a concept album about a serial killer.  That right there is a little creepy. 

I heard the new title track “Fear of a Blank Planet” months ago and just decided I’d skip the album.  Then recently I read a discussion about it on a Christian Prog Rock Yahoo Group I subscribe to and some positive comments there persuaded me to pick it up.  Porcupine Tree is NOT Christian Prog or Christian anything, but FOABP is a concept album about today’s youth culture.  That right there should interest Christians, I think, especially since this seems to be a brutally honest attempt at covering the subject.  It’s not a rated “G” album by any means, but I think the songs do a great job of showing the world thru the eyes of medicated, media-saturated youth of today.

The material on the EP is promised not to be tracks deemed unworthy of the full album due to quality, they were instead deemed not applicable to the overall theme content-wise.  And being a fan of Robert Fripp, I’m looking forward to getting my 1 of 5000 in the mail.  If you’re curious about “Fear of a Blank Planet”, you can take a listen to samples of each song (2 samples of the 3rd song since it’s 17 minutes long) here.

P.O.D. is coming back “fall 2007″ according to their website.  Which is GREAT news to me because I LOVE their 2006 album “Testify”.  If you are a Christian who every once in awhile needs some good hard rock and roll to kick you in the face, then Testify is for you.  Many, many great tracks on that CD, but my personal favorite is “Mistakes and Glories” simply because they scream “SWEEP THE LEG!  SWEEP THE LEG!”  I mean how cool is that?! This is for your rawkfist, Brian, trust me.

So, no details yet on the new disc, but I don’t need ‘em.  I’ll be nabbing it for sure.

And I saved the best for last:

The FLOWER KINGS!!  You can’t talk about great Prog Rock and not mention the Flower Kings.  Not possible.  In the 90s, they ruled the Prog Roost along with Spock’s Beard and added their own landmarks to recent genre history.  There’s “Dark Side of the Moon” and there’s “Space Revolver”.  Oh yeah..  Same sentence and right at home. 

These guys are one of my favorite bands of all time.  Prolific as heck and they manage to still produce greatly satisfying ear candy.  If you like old-school prog and maybe even a touch of jazz fusion, then you should really check these guys out.  Both parts of “I Am the Sun” are masterpieces.  And they love to show off their chops on an instrumental now and then such as “Rumble Fish Twist” or “Unorthodox Dancing Lesson”.  They have a great sense of humor, which I think shows in the cover for the new album as well as songs such as “Hit Me With a Hit” or “The Chicken Farmer Song”, and just when you think they are too good for power chords you come across a song like “Paradox Hotel”.

The new album comes out this month in Europe while us American buckaroos have to wait until October 9th.  Sigh.  So much to look forward to…

Regarding the title “The Sum of No Evil” and the album art, frontman Roine Stolt had this to say:  “There are way too many dark serious melodramatic bands out there, we wanted to be the colourful, friendly alternative.”  I like this guy.  The press release on the web site does a bit of boasting:  “Their latest album, The Sum Of No Evil, is a perfect example of a timeless prog rock release that easily lives up to classics such as Lamb Lies Down On Broadway or Yessongs.”  Now, this scares me a bit.  The last time I heard a statement like this was when The Tangent released “A Place in the Queue” and compared it to the prog epitome “Tales From Topographic Oceans”.  And live up to this claim it does not.  So, we’ll be the judge of the prog classic status.  And I can’t wait to hear for myself! 

Here’s to finishing out 2007 with some great music!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 10:29 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.