Hodge on Bass and Drums, soon joined by Frenchman Olivier Hadder on
vocals and Italian Peppe Schiavone on guitar.
Abandoned Stars take influences from classic prog rock like Rush &
Dream Theater and newer prog metal bands such as Pain of Salvation,
Opeth & Karnivool.
Summer 2011 the band chose four songs of their repertoire to be mixed
and mastered by the excellent Marty Bak of SLR studio,Ontario, Canada
in order to unleash their EP 'Opening Act' to the masses. To support
the release, a music video for the song 'Beyond Reason' was made
available from December 2011.
Early 2012 the band is being played to a few rock/metal web radios and
got some national and international FM airplay and the EP is
collecting rave reviews in the press across the globe. Abandoned
Stars is also a real stage machine: their first show of the year was
unbelievably hot for Scotland and melted the ears of the Teviot
Underground (400+ capacity) in their hometown of Edinburgh, a good
omen for things to come!
Press:
'DREAM THEATER and RUSH are the clear major influences here and then I
am talking about the first couple of DREAM THEATER records, mixed with
RUSH circa 'Presto' and they also have some similarities to KING'S X.
It's a pity there are only 4 tracks on the album, but happily they all
sound very good and make you very eager to a full-length CD release.
The album was mixed and mastered in Canada and you can really hear
that, because like already mentioned earlier on, they sound very
non-UK/Scottish and are closer to a Canadian, American or Scandinavian
band. Opener "Beyond reason" shows right away we are dealing here with
a very impressive band, because this is RUSH meets DREAM THEATER meets
KING'S X at it's best! Following track "Follow your heart" is
catchier, has some great keyboard arrangements and a killer
KAMELOT-ish chorus, so a more straight-ahead uptempo piece, with still
some massive sounding Prog Metal breaks and overall the best song on
the EP… these songs are meant to sound darker than the earlier tunes
and are resembling a very slight touch of bands like PAIN OF
SALVATION, NEVERMORE and MASTODON. The band has a great lead singer,
instrumental it all sounds very good and who knows in 2012 this band
might release a sensational full-length CD that will be as good as
2011's PAGAN'S MIND classic 'Heavenly ecstasy' that was the best Prog
Metal album of the year 2011' ~ Gabor Kelinblosem- Strutter, Holland
Band Line Up:
Lead Vocals – Olivier Hadder
Guitar – Peppe Schiavone
Bass – Leen
Drums – Tony Hodge
Tracklisting:
1- Beyond Reason
2- Follow Your Heart
3- Sealing My Fate
4- Against The Tide
Abandoned Stars
Web: www.abandonedstars.co.uk
www.facebook.com/pages/Abandoned-Stars/144587568925194?sk=info
www.reverbnation.com/show/6564139#!/
www.myspace.com/abandonedstars
www.youtube.com/user/AbandonedStars
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Progressive Rock & Progressive Metal - E-Zine
http://www.progressiverockbr.com
http://progrockmetal.blogspot.com/
