The Anabasis

In 2009, I approached George with the idea of merging a personal story of falling from grace and redemption with that of a sociopolitical story of the avarice, lust, betrayal and self-destructive impulses that riddle and affect our public existences while also highlighting the hope that can release us from such travails … the album was named “Back From Being Gone” and The ANABASIS was born. But we knew we needed additional help with the project, so since I had worked with Lee Abraham before, and loved how his album “Black and White” sounded, I asked him to produce and mix the album for us.  Lee also brought in Gerald “Mully” Mulligan for drums.  It was around this time that we sent Ryo Okumoto the demo for “Rome” and he took the song in a completely different direction that what we had originally produced as a demo, but we recognized that not only was it a different direction, but it was a better direction.  Originally, we only planned to have Ryo as a guest, but he expressed some interest in doing more, so we decided to have him on every track except “Carpe Diem” which had already been completed by Jeroen Hendrix on keys.  Jeroen’s performance was perfect so we didn’t see any need to do it over with Ryo.

Everyone on the album who required payment were paid as session players up front, and several of the players donated their contributions since they were friends of mine and just looking to have some fun playing good music without the stress and hassles of business entanglements.  This was a labor of love on my part, we literally have no chance of making any profit on it, but that’s not why I make music anyway.  I make music because I love music, and I know that my friends who are the core band, Per Fredrik Pellek Åsly (vocals) Gerald Mulligan (drums) Ryo Okumoto (keyboards) and George Andrade (lyrics/producer) are in this for the love of the art form and the joy of creating music.

The word ANABASIS can mean “an advance” particularly a military advance, and since a large part of the conceptual underpinning of the story has to do with the Roman Empire and how they conquered Egypt, but ultimately met their own demise through their own self-destructive impulses.  But you’ll notice that some of the songs are also about more individual personal struggles, and I thought a word that means “advancing” was well suited to that side of the concept as well, since the songs deal with human struggles.  Plus, it sounds cool.

I am friends with Kerry Chicoine of the progressive rock band “Mars Hollow” and when we were closing in on finishing the album I sent him a few of the reference mixes and asked if he thought his label might be interested and he put me in touch with Steve Carroll and the rest, as they say, is history.

The music is a collection of songs that I’ve literally been developing for the last decade.  There is a trilogy of epic tracks that we refer to as “The ANABASIS Suite” and those are Track 1, “Rome,” Track 4, “Vikings,” and Track 6, “Egypt” and those are the three historical tracks that George Andrade did an amazing job with lyrically.  Ryo Okumoto helped us tremendously with these tracks as well.  Repeated listens will reveal plenty of musical and lyrical nuggets throughout these three tracks with there being several melodic themes that are revisited as well as several lyrical breadcrumbs that tie them all together into one very large package.  The other three tracks are a bit more personal in nature and provide a peek into my own personal struggles.  Musically, I would say we walk right up to the line where heavy metal begins, but we never quite cross that line.  There are certainly plenty of moments of crunchy guitars, and I think anyone who listens to this album is going to know that I am a fan of Iron Maiden, Transatlantic and maybe even Fates Warning, but they may also be surprised at how thickly orchestrated it is.  For example, if I remember correctly, Ryo sent us 16 individual various keyboard tracks for “Vikings.”  I know you can’t please everyone, but we really tried to make an album that had something on there that most fans of progressive music would enjoy.

The ANABASIS is purely a studio project.  In fact, no two musicians ever occupied the same room at the same time in the recording of this album as it was done completely over the internet.   Sadly, in the age of torrents the studio band is a dying breed, since we must survive on album sales alone and won’t be out playing any gigs.  As I mentioned earlier, this was a labor of love, something I wanted to do for the love of the genre and for the pleasure of creating something from nothing.  I have had such an incredible experience putting this music together and working with all of these ridiculously talented musicians.  We will definitely be doing another album, everyone who was on this album is already on board for the next one and I am pretty sure that we’ll have a few more very well known special guests from the progressive rock scene next time including at least one more member of Spock’s Beard, possibly two more.  I’ve already got two tracks fully demoed, one is an epic and another three that I’m working on, so yes, we’re well on our way to album #2.

To wrap up this interview, is there anything you want to add to this interview ?

I consider myself fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with the musicians I’ve worked with on this album and I can’t wait to make the next one.  Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to listen to our music.  We appreciate every single fan.

for promoting the band here in ProgArchives