Year : 2019
Style : Progressive Power Metal
Country : United States
Audio : 320 kbps + front + Video
Size : 129 mb
Bio:
Lance King (born November 23, 1962) is an American heavy metal vocalist specializing in melodic rock progressive and power metal.As a performing musician since 1981, King has sung with many bands in his career, in 1981 the summer after he graduated high school in Winona, MN, King was asked by a few musician friends that he had jammed with in the past to join a small weekend club band called "The News" The band focused mainly on Canadian rock covers and after a couple shows they decided to change the name of the band to "Freelance". During his five years with the band from (1981-1986) Freelance began playing local bars on the weekends, almost every weekend, then the band reached out to talent agents in the Twin cities and the band began playing farther and wider, by 1983 they were doing club shows, from British Columbia, and Idaho to Michigan in an old school bus they had renovated and dubbed "the urban insult vehicle" mostly due to the fact that they had simply painted it primer grey so it wasn't school bus yellow anymore. Freelance did create 10 songs of original material and played these live, but never recorded them properly and thus are lost to the world. In 1986 when Freelance was beginning to fall apart, King joined a Rochester, MN based band Gemini. Gemini had been playing a circuit of clubs and ballrooms in the try-state area of Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin for over ten years when King joined in 1986 they were a cover band playing as much new wave as they were corporate rock, after a year King gave the band an ultimatum, that either they started writing songs and trying to move to the next level or King was moving on to something else. After somewhat of a power play, King managed to become the driving force in the band and in 1988 they started breaking into the clubs in the Minneapolis and Saint Paul, eventually dethroning the reigning club champions of the day in the premier clubs "The Mirage" and the "Iron Horse", though they played many other rooms. Gemini was doing exceptionally well with their show attendance, normally having between 700-1000 people a night at their shows, playing over 250 shows a year, they started having major labels coming to the shows. The band was courted by labels and managers but nothing solid was ever offered by the major labels due to the band only having a few originals at the time. The managers contracts King deemed unworthy of the band. So Gemini continued to play shows and write in the clubs during the days, testing the new material on the crowds at night, and every month saving enough to record a couple of their new tunes they felt strongly enough about. By 1990 the band had released it's first self titled, self financed and self produced album on King's own label Nightmare records… "Coming Home" was picked up by local station 93X and pirate radio station Z-Rock, the troops station in Iraq during operation Desert Storm as well as several regional broadcast stations from Minnesota and Iowa. The band began extending their shows reach by playing major markets in Kansas City, Chicago, Milwaukee, Winnipeg and all points in-between in an effort to build. The line up had continual lineup changes of second guitarists, drummers, and bassists, the only consistency was King and guitarist Rob Kruger. Rob and Lance switched off on vocals, guitar and keyboards during the band three hour shows. In 1992 Gemini released their second album Out for Blood. With the demanding schedule of playing so many shows consistently over the last several years, the band was waring on each other due to too many chemicals and lack of sleep. In 1993 King departed to start is own band "The Kings Machine".Immediately King began auditioning players in 1993 for his new solo project "The Kings Machine", joining forces with former "Touched" guitarist Dave Barilla, armed with a four track and hunger the two wrote over 15 songs before finding suitable players; drummer Todd Silverstone and bassist /keyboardist Brian Hollenbeck. The newly formed band immediately found themselves opening for such rock icons as David Lee Roth, Great White, Slaughter and Cinderella in the Twin Cities area and released a four song EP simply called "sampler plate EP in early 1994. The band recorded a 24 track digital recording with multi-cameral shoot for a local cable rock TV show called "On the Rocks" that Iron Horse house sound tech Sandy Marks produced. By 1995 The Kings Machine had self recorded and released it's first full length album called "A State of Mind". But the band had also recorded another full length albums worth of material that has never seen the light of day outside of the live shows. After a couple of major lineup changes TKM was reconfigured into a glorified cover band and fell apart when King was touring in Europe with Balance of Power in 2000.In 1997 King was asked to demo up a few songs for British band Balance of Power Balance of Power had already released one album "When the World Falls Down" in 1996 via Point Music/Metal Heaven into Europe and via Pony/Canyon Japan. The band was getting a nice advance from each label which totaled $50,000 plus publishing The band offered King a weekly fee of $1500 a week to record and tour plus performance royalties and expenses, and King said yes! The band immediately flew King to London, England and they recorded all the vocals for their second album "Book of Secrets" in ten days time. This was quite a turn around album for Balance of Power since they had just replaced their guitarist Paul Curtis with Pete Southern, and the direction became much heavier and more progressive with both King and Southern on board, taking the band far from their AOR roots. The band hired "the voice of the BBC Rob Brown" for narration segments on the concept album and drummer /producer Lional Hicks flew out to Minneapolis to mix the album with King, since he liked what Lance had done with the demo mixes. They mixed the album in Logic recording studio's where King had mixed the first Gemini record with Brian Bart assisting at the board.Both Labels loved the change, and so did the media and the fans. "Book of Secrets" getting extremely high marks in all the reviews getting "album of the month" and even covers on several of the largest magazines in Europe. In Japan Burrn Magazine ranked Lance King as #1 best vocalist in Rock/Metal for the year 1998. The band was excited and was offered a tour with Bruce Dickenson due in part to Dickenson sharing bassist Chris Dale with Balance of Power. However King didn't find out about the opportunity until way after the fact, due to one of the members in Balance of Power turning the tour down for personal reasons. So the band immediately focused on writing their third album "Ten More Tales…" with King again flying from Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota to London, England to record his parts, this time in only 7 days. Again Hicks flew out to mix the record with King and this time they chose to work at OarFin Studio's downtown Minneapolis with the golden ears of house engineer Todd Fitzgerald. The band worked out a gentlemen's agreement with King to release both "Book of Secrets" and "Ten More Tales…"to North America on Nightmare and "Ten More Tales of Grand Illusion" was released simultaneously to Europe, Japan and North America in the spring of 1999.A European tour opening slot was offered to Balance of Power with co-headliners "Axis" and "Pink Cream 69" and in the summer of 2000 the band toured extensively. Then it was on to the fourth album to be called "Perfect Balance", this album again had all pre-production recording happening in London in Lionel Hicks POD studios, but this time, the entire band flew out to Lance King's home studio studio where he and original singer, now returned bassist Tony Ritchie recorded all vocals for Perfect Balance album, after which Hicks and King again mixed and mastered the album with Fitzgerald at OarFin. Perfect Balance was released in 2001. Chris Beck, of HM magazine called it a "superior album in almost every way" when comparing it to the band's previous efforts. He also said the album "had excellent singing, musicianship and production".In 2003, the band parted ways with singer Lance King after some disagreements. In an interview with HM magazine, King said that "unfortunately we couldn't work together anymore--some business, and some of it personal, mostly because King was not part of the bands "company". " Guitarist Pete Southern said in another interview that Lance's departure was "never about music", but attributed it to the "business side" of their relationship. In June 2003, they recruited singer John K, from Biomechanical and released the album Heathen Machine who left after one album and a brief tour.In 2005, the band released their first compilation of hits, entitled Heathenology. This package included a DVD with live footage of the band, plus a collection of tracks from previous albums featuring many performances of King both video and recorded.On June 31, 2011, King conceptually arranged for a concept album based on his life and the 11:11 time prompt phenomena, emailing his ideas and rough demos of songs he had created to musicians he desired to write alongside. In just three months, with the help of friends, contemporaries and business associates Jacob Hansen (Beyond Twilight, Invocator & Anubis Gate), Kim Olesen (Anubis Gate), Michael Harris (Darkology, Thought Chamber), Tore St Moren (Jørn), Fred Colombo (Spheric Universe Experience), Markus Sigfridsson (Darkwater & Harmony), Kevin Codfert (Adagio), Michael Hansen & Shane Dhiman (Phonomik), Morten Gade Sørensen (Pyramaze, Wuthering Heights), Elyes Bouchoucha, Malek Ben Arbia, and Anis Jouini (Myrath), Mistheria (Bruce Dickinson, and many others, the album, called A Moment in Chiros after the Kairos Moment of Greek rhetoric and Christian theology,[1] was written and recorded in three short months. It was released via Nightmare Records via Sony/Red to North America on November 7, 2011 (though originally intended for November 11, 2011 in complement with the album title), and distributed digitally and physically throughout the world by distribution partners of Nightmare Records on 11/11/11. $1.11 from each sale of A Moment in Chiros will support efforts combating human trafficking, one of the fastest growing criminal activities worldwide, through an organization called NOT FOR SALE.In 2014 King began work on a second solo album that he will be returning to do live shows again with in 2015 after taking five years off of the road.
Album:
Lance King is a Renaissance man. He is the force behind such bands as AVIATOR, PYRAMAZE, BALANCE OF POWER, and is the owner of the record label Nightmare Records. Now he’s trying his hand at something new. Rather than merely creating his own music, he is trying to invent his own genre. It’s no small feat, especially in a style of music that has dozens. Celestial Metal is a genre that will focus on philosophical elements and lead the listener to think about their life and the society they live in. For me, there are already genres, in and out of Heavy Metal, that accomplish the same premise. How could this one be different?At first, I was distracted by so many older elements that I was disillusioned. However, given the ambition set by King, I decided to give the album a second listen, and while I still take some issues with it, it did not disappoint. The title track, “ReProgram”, is a powerhouse with soaring instrumentation and thoughtful lyrics. I do wish that he included more technological ambiance or softened the song, and introduced it later to unify the album’s overall sound and message, especially here. If you’re trying to show that the child in your song is oppressed by society and school, wouldn’t it get the point across further with the inclusion of a technological ambiance to show that? It’s still a good song, I just think that King could have gone further with its concept.There were songs and elements on the album that I adored. I enjoyed “Limitless”, especially how he matched the lyrical content with soaring instrumentals; that gave me hope listening to it. I also loved the piano ambiance and electronic nods in “Reaction Formation” and “Wide Open”. For the most part, I enjoyed the variety of drum beats and guitar solos in each song. I wish there were more of these elements throughout, especially the pleasantly surprising Jazz-sounding guitars near the end of “Technology”. Innovative, new sounds like that show me that this new genre has promise.My biggest sticking points were that the tracks had elements that were done to the point of a cliché in other works. For example, listening to the lyrics of “Chaotica”, I immediately began thinking of “Vicarious” by TOOL and how they did it better; they delivered the observation that news-addicted media is just there for the drama with more subtlety and didn’t beat the listener over the head with the message. However, I will say that I loved the instrumentation on “Chaotica” and its ambiance, along with every song after “Technology”; it has amazing background sound. The progressive ambiance on this track, and others, should have been implemented more to create a unique sound to cement this album as its own genre.I think as King develops his genre and gets a better grasp at how to fine-tune the conventions (especially as he grows as a lyricist) he will be a force to be reckoned with. I will be waiting for the third one, and I think it will be a masterpiece. Also, I would love to see more bands follow suit and give this genre a try. I think it would be a wonderful addition to Metal with some Post-Metal and New Age influences, and I will be sure to stay tuned for more bands giving the genre a shot.
Line Up:
Vocals: Lance King
Guitar: Kim Olesen (Reprogram and Technology), Markus Sigfridsson (“Stand your Ground,” “Limitless,” “Perfect World”) Matt Hodsdon (“Chaotica,” “Reaction Formation,” “Spell of Domestication”), Rich Hinks (“Pointing Fingers”, “A Mind at War”, “Wide Open”)
Bass: Rich Hinks (except on “Reprogram” and “Technology”)
Keyboard: Kim Olesen (Reprogram and Technology), Markus Sigfridsson (“Stand your Ground,” “Limitless,” “Perfect World”), Matt Hodsdon (“Chaotica,” “Reaction Formation,” “Spell of Domestication”), Rich Hinks (“Pointing Fingers”, “A Mind at War”, “Wide Open”)
Guest Artists (Featured Friends):
Morten GadeSørensen - Massive Grooves and Percussion
Fred Columbo - (Keys transition between “Wide Open &Chaotica”, solo on “Spell of Domestication” and “A Mind at War”)
Mattias IA Eklundh - (Guitar solo on “Wide Open”)
Jakob Riis - (Bass on “ReProgram” and “Technology”)
Tracklist:
01. ReProgram
02. Pointing Fingers
03. Stand Your Ground
04. Technology
05. Reaction Formation
06. Limitless
07. Wide Open
08. Chaotica
09. Spell of Domestication
10. Perfect World
11. A Mind at War
+ Video "Pointing Fingers" (Official Video)
Download links for all albums only on our blog here: http://goodmetalandhar.do.am/
