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██▌ Artist...: Crown Lands ░▐██▌
░▐██ Album....: Apocalypse ░██▌░
▓▐██ Year.....: 2026 ▓▐██▓
▓▐██ Rel. Date: 2026-11-01 ░▐██▓
▐██ Genre....: Progressive Rock ██▌░
░ ██▌ Label....: Inside Out Music / Sony Music ██▌
▐██ Source...: CD ▐██
░▐██▌ Type.....: Album ▐██▌░
▓▄████ Quality..: VBR, 44.1kHz, Joint Stereo ████▌░
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1. Proclamation I 1:21
2. Foot Soldier of the Syndicate 4:18
3. Through the Looking Glass 3:44
4. Blackstar 4:01
5. The Fall 4:31
6. The Revenants I 5:25
7. Apocalypse 19:01
42:21
Ripper's note: the 7th tracks, "Apocalypse" is the suite that consists
of the following parts:
I Into The Fray
II Dragons & Demons (Main Theme)
III Mortar & Pestilence
IV Blackstar's Hammer (Main Theme II)
V Plea Of The Ebonflight
VI Showdown Pt. I: Fall Of The Dragon
VII Proclamation II
VIII Fatigued & Forlorn
IX The Asteroid Belt
X Showdown Pt. II: The Battle Back Home
XI Shadows In The Dark
XII Epilogue (Main Theme Reprise)
XIII Final Proclamation
--
Canada's Rush worshippers are back with another gem of hard rockin'
prog!
1. "Proclamation I" (1:22) nice symphonic prog intro--perfect to get one
revved up for that which follows!
2. "Foot Soldiers of the Syndicate" (4:20) despite the RUSH foundations
to this song, the top end of the song feels so much like AC/DC,
NAZARETH, a higher-pitched BLACK SABBATH/OZZIE OSBOURNE as well as THIN
LIZZY. Powerful, tight, and wholly original despite its obvious
influences--though Cody does loose a bit of his vim and vigor toward the
end.
3. "Through the Looking Glass" (3:45) another great tune that conjures
up reminders of many of the hair bands from the late 70s and 1980s that
served as survivors/alternatives to the dying prog rock scene: Blue
Oyster Cult, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, plus there is a definite debt owed
to "Stairway to Heaven"-era LED ZEPPELIN here.
4. "Blackstar" (4:00) this hard rocker owes a lot to "classic" artists
like OZZIE and AC/DC and even the White Stripes-- but it benefits from
some modern production tricks
5. "The Fall" (4:31) still heavy/hard rock but slowed down to sound more
like an Ozzie imitator singing one of TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREKERS'
early tunes (which is the era I most enjoyed of theirs). Nice fullness
given to the drums, guitar power chords, and lead guitars but I don't
like this effect applied to Cody's lead vocals.
6. "The Revenants I" (5:29) gently picked-and-strummed acoustic guitar
playing all by itself until Cody joins in singing in a fragile
high-pitched voice giving this a kind of POISON/GUNS 'N' ROSES feel and
sound. No other instruments or tracks join Cody and Kevin other than
some support keyboard strings wash chords in the background for the
choruses and then some First Nations flute in the final minute, making
this quite an intimate little song. That's quite a performance from
Cody: he sounds genuinely passionate about his subject matter.
7. "Apocalypse" (19:01) opens with some great prog bombast sounding like
a cross between Styx, Rush, and maybe a little Pendragon. Great drumming
and full band riffing merges into a guitar-led motif that really gets
the adrenaline pumping. Great three minute intro! Cody enters as the
singer in the fourth minute with a powerful OZZIE-like sound and style.
The brief first verse is ended with an awesome bridge from which comes a
modified, slowed down RUSH- like motif that Cody continues his
impassioned story-telling. Great Axl Rose-like performance. At the
six-minute mark things slow down, the instrumental palette thinning and
turning pretty while Cody continues in a more sensitive voice, but this
only lasts half a minute before the band takes a left turn, speeding
down a hill with new sounds, chords, and Fx. This is more theatric than
what we've been hearing--feeling more akin to the music of band's like
BLUE ├?YSTER CULT, BABYLON, and even early solo PETER GABRIEL. I like
it! The tenth minute gets heavy again though the guitar chord
progressions are slower, more protracted, but then the eleventh minute
brings a spacious passage based around arpeggiated chords from the
electric guitar over which Cody plays some PG/Genesis-like flute. In the
12th minute the Rush and Ozzie-like sounds take on a passage of rising
guitar chords that sounds quite Crimsonian. Awesome drumming here! It's
hard to keep in mind that The end of the 13th minute sees a transition
to a kind of Yes "Gates of Delirium" motif with some URIAH HEEP-like
vocals and synth usage. This is awesome prog! It's like early NEKTAR! A
total stop and clearout at 14:18 leads to gentle passage of guitar and
Mellotron which Cody eventually joins singing a "Stairway to
Heaven"-like melody line with sensitivity and control that I can only
compare to the great Robert Plant. At 17:15 we ramp up to a slow
four-chord RUSH motif before transitioning into. Cody's voice
adaptability to all of the song's changes in mood and tempo is so
perfect: so theatric and yet so well suited and controlled! (Which leads
me to believe that they must have practiced the hell out of each and
every section of this epic before finalizing the polished versions that
ended up in this mix.) And then it ends! One of the strongest
impressions I'm left with upon finishing this song is how satisfied I
feel with the journey Cody and Kevin have taken me on. I feel as if I've
just been through an entire Tolkien adventure/quest--all in the course
of just 19 minutes! Astonishing! And I have very little criticism,
virtually nothing that I would change (despite the fact that I
comprehended exactly nothing of the story Cody might have been trying to
tell), though the motifs and palettes through fourth through ninth
minutes are not my favorite styles of music (The second, more theatric
half is where I really get engaged and excited). The vocal performance
was so perfect, so theatric, so fitting with the music, that I could
care less about what he was saying: I went on my own epic adventure all
by myself. What an adventure!
The band is unafraid to show their influences yet at the same time they
keep growing, keep evolving, here creating quite original music that is
built so reverently out of the of our predecessors.
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