These guys have been my favorite band since Crack The Skye, pretty much standing on a mountain alone in that regard. While everyone else got mad they were turning into a 70’s prog band, I loved ‘em even more for it.
Kurt Balou produced the new album so I’d imagine it’s going to be a bit more rippin’ than the last decade of albums. At the same time, these dudes now have 3 albums in a row that were directly influenced by the death of someone close to them and they got pretty good at delivering the dark and moody in the process, so I’m sure they’ll touch on some of that.
I had to stop watching videos of Nick playing Brent’s solos last year, it was just bumming me out. Nick’s fucking great, no denying that, but he was throwing shred shit into it and that was like someone replacing Gilmour back in ‘79 then having some dude come out and shred over “Comfortably Numb”. One of the last vids I saw he had clearly spent some time with the songs and was laying back and doing the solo justice, so I really hope that’s across the board now.
Emperor got me through my first dog’s death and Hushed And Grimm got me through my divorce, those guitar solos meant a lot more to me than just being some notes some dude can spew all over the songs, ya know?
Gotta give those guys credit, I lost my best bro to mental illness/drug addiction a couple years ago and I’ve put a bunch of that into songs, but if people started asking me about it like they’re going to be in interviews, I dunno how I’d respond. I’d imagine it’d be a lot of “WTF do you think, dumbass?” replies to stuff like “Gee, wasn’t that a bummer that you kicked him out right before he died?”
