Cheat The Prophet (US) - Neo Prog

CHEAT THE PROPHET is a progressive rock project involving the core members of a former band called NEPENTHE, which split up in December 1999 after releasing just a single album in 1997.

Multi-instrumentalist brothers Matt and Todd Mikenzo, along with drummer Jamie Boruch, have been making music together for a long time, beginning in the early 1990s with some gigs in the New York/New Jersey club area playing a mix of Euro Pop and Neo Prog under the name ARS NOVA, and releasing an album called 'Turning The Tide' in May 1993, before changing the name of the band to NEPENTHE and releasing an album called 'Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt' in March 1997.

They have been joined by other musicians at various stages of their musical journey - some for longer than others - but the core of the group has remained intact throughout. Just before the turn of the century however, despite some critical success as NEPENTHE, it seemed that commercial success would forever elude the trio, and the stresses of life began affecting them both physically and mentally. Patience and tempers began to wear thin, and they found that the bond they once had as a bunch of twenty-somethings had begun to wane.

Despite this, they stayed in touch, saw each other from time to time, and kept making music individually. Then, towards the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jamie and Matt met up in Idaho for a weekend of mountain biking, and they decided that many of the changes that had occurred as a result of Covid meant it might be worth them taking another shot at making music together as a trio, despite them living many miles apart from each other. Todd subsequently agreed, leading to the beginnings of what eventually became CHEAT THE PROPHET.

Demos and songs in various stages of completion were swapped via Google Drive, and the collection of samples was eventually whittled down down into the basis of just six songs. Two years or so later, the songs were finally finished, which might seem like a long time, but after waiting twenty years to even begin the project in the first place, maybe it wasn't after all. The album was called Redemption firstly because the trio felt to some degree that their final recordings and shows from twenty years earlier weren't as good as they might have been. They also thought that they'd left what was possibly some of their best material unrecorded, and decided it would be a shame to leave those songs unfinished.

The 'Redemption' album was released on 7th February 2025.

- Jamie Boruch / drums, percussion

With:

https://cheattheprophet.bandcamp.com/album/redemption.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kQkmqhVXjBkvMbW-qrBSSnVoqCHSaMAjo.

https://awesomeprog.com/artists/25353.