REDEMPTION: New Album Title, Producer Revealed

Los Angeles-based progressive metal band REDEMPTION, which features in its ranks vocalist Ray Alder of FATES WARNING, has set "This Mortal Coil" as the title of its fifth album, tentatively due in the fall. The CD will be produced by Neil Kernon, who has previously worked with such acts as NEVERMORE, NILE, QUEENSRŸCHE and DEICIDE, and will feature the following working songtitles, among others: "Noonday Devil", "No Tickets To The Funeral", "Rain In My Soul", "Focus", "Dreams From The Pit", "Path Of The Tornado", "Blink Of An Eye", "Perfect" and "Departure Of The Pale Horse".

Commented guitarist/songwriter Nicolas van Dyk: "The band was really happy with 'Snowfall On Judgment Day' and so when it came time to put together new material, with our own expectations for ourselves always on the rise, we gave a lot of thought to how to deliver the goods and step up our game yet again.

"We have worked well with some excellent producers in the past and they have put their mark on our sound, especially Tommy Newton, with whom we did two records and who we tried to involve early enough in the production process to help shape the records. But even with Tommy, most of the involvement came after we were finished with songs.

"For this record, I thought we could bring in an outside producer very early on. Someone to help shape the music and raise the bar for us, challenging our ideas and getting the best from the band. I knew I wanted somebody with a depth of experience that reflected the many things REDEMPTION pursues in its music: melodic but heavy; intricate and complex when called for, but accessible; a bit of virtuosity but always in the service of the song. This is a tall order, when you think about it. We would need a producer, ideally, who had extensive experience in pop music but also maybe jazz fusion, had worked with somebody like KANSAS, had worked with somebody like NEVERMORE, had extensive experience in heavy technical music (like, say, SPIRAL ARCHITECT or even somebody like NILE) and hopefully also had particular domain expertise in prog metal (maybe someone like QUEENSRŸCHE).

"Fortunately, such a producer exists! I am delighted to announce that we will be working on 'This Mortal Coil' with Neil Kernon, whose extensive CV includes all of those bands. He has immense experience in song craft, creating compelling intricate music across a variety of genres. It's a great fit for what we are looking for right now. He is, simply put, a legendary producer and we are really fired up to work with him.

"Neil and I have known each other socially for several years, and actually about three years ago he called me and asked if REDEMPTION would be interested in creating a ''Rage For Order' for the next century.' Uh, YES, we would! However, at that time, we were already down the road with 'Snowfall On Judgment Day' so I explained that we would have to table the conversation until the next record.

"So when the time came to consider how to make sure our next CD is our best (a goal we will always have!) I thought immediately back to that conversation. And as Neil and I spoke about the possibilities, it became obvious to us both that this could be a very special opportunity to make a really great CD. So we are really going to dig into pre-production together beginning just a few weeks from now and needless to say, I'm really looking forward to it!

"I've been working on the basic structure of the songs for a couple of months now, and the band is very pleased with how things are coming together. We are taking more time to explore different drum parts than we have done before, and working out bass and drum parts together in a more organic way than we have had the luxury of doing in the past.

"So the songs are in a bit of flux now, but at this point it looks like we will have ten or eleven tracks, with a fair amount of compositional diversity between them but all having the strong melody, the aggressive riffing and the sense of emotional and musical urgency that we hope is core to all of REDEMPTION's music.

"This is not a rock opera but the songs are tied together, loosely, by the theme of confronting our mortality. You can imagine, given my medical adventure, that what I experienced would make its way into my songwriting.

"After pre-production, we'll get to tracking and mixing and all that good stuff. We are shooting for a fall release date, assuming all goes well. We're also planning some pretty extensive and cool bonus materials, which will be fun to do and which we think our fans will really enjoy. We also have some tentative plans right now to play out a bit more extensively than we did on the last CD in support of the record."

In November 2008, Nicolas van Dyk was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a disease that he described at the time as "a particularly bad form of blood cancer which is generally considered incurable and which has a five-year survival rate of 34%." He now says, "I continue to follow the very aggressive protocol of my brilliant doctor, Dr. Bart Barlogie, who is quite literally saving the lives of people diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma — he's the only doctor in the world who believes it can be cured. As of now, I remain in complete remission and have been there for around fifteen months. If I make it thirty six months, Bart's data shows I am almost certainly cured. So I continue to take three nasty meds to (hopefully) ensure I remain in remission. The odds at this point are very much in my favor. Incidentally, I have a different blood cancer than what Nergal of BEHEMOTH is battling, but a small part of the aggressive protocol I underwent consisted of two blood stem cell transplants that Nergal recently underwent."

On February 4, 2010, REDEMPTION was interviewed for an episode of "Hard" on the AUX music channel out of Canada. The six-minute segment, which includes performance footage, can be viewed below.