Two L.A. bands in a row! I first heard Redemption shortly after their first and self-titled album was released in 2003. I jumped on the bandwagon early mostly due to contributions by Jason Rullo and Michael Romeo of Symphony X, Ray Alder and Mark Zonder of Fates Warning and vocals by Steel Prophet's Rick Mythiasin. Initially, I thought the band was a prog metal "supergroup" but later learned that, at that stage, it was effectively a session project by a guy I had never heard of named Nick van Dyk. Eventually, after a couple personnel changes, they grew into an actual band... and a prolific one at that. In the 10 years since that debut, they've released five studio albums and one live recording. I managed to keep up for the first three, which are all impressive and enjoyable works, firmly in the standard progressive metal mold.
Here's kind of a fun story. In researching for this post, I was determined to find out something about Nick's history. Had he really not been with any other bands? He seemed altogether too polished and well-connected not to have been. It's tough to find a lot of information on him, but after much digging I discovered, with a pretty high degree of certainty, that his day job is right here in Burbank with my own employer, The Walt Disney Company. In fact, his office is about a block from mine, and about a block away on the other side is my house. Crazy.
"The Suffocating Silence" off of Redemption's third album, The Origins of Ruin, doesn't start off shy, as you can hear below. The intro in 3 (with a syncopated 2-feel on the snare) leaps off the starting line with an fast arpeggiated guitar riff over a hard-charging rhythm section. The intro ends with a hold setting up the main riff, which is just wicked and starts out on the guitar alone with some punctuation by the drummer leading into the verse fully accompanied on the same riff. There are some tricky little rhythmic twists, but it's mostly a fast, heavy and driving feel through the verse. The chorus (1:55) shifts to a 5-feel, but with the same energetic guitar work. After the first chorus, there's a nice keyboard solo (2:21), followed by a strong back-and-forth dueling guitars solo (3:00) with a bridge in 7 in between them. At 3:53 the chorus returns, and after some variation of it, the song really goes bananas with a super twisty, heavy instrumental outro from 4:57 to the end. All in all, it's a shifty, high-energy song with a lot of complexity... exactly up my alley. See how you like it below.
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