New Spins SONS OF APOLLO
Edited by Jo Kendall jo.kendall@futurenet.com
Mike Portnoy and Derek Sherinian’s supergroup follow up their 2017 debut Psychotic Symphony with… well, more of the same. The band toured fairly heavily off the first album, playing some 83 shows, so they’ve had some time to establish and build the chemistry between the five members: Billy Sheehan on bass, Bumblefoot on guitar and vocalist Jeff Scott Soto alongside Portnoy and Sherinian. But the band have yet to assert their own unique identity as a collective to the same extent that Flying Colors, another of Portnoy’s all-star projects, accomplished this year on their excellent third album.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the main musical point of reference for Sons Of Apollo is Dream Theater, the band that first brought Sherinian and Portnoy together, and MMXX often sounds like the two former Dream Theater men are trying to beat their old band at their own game. It’s big, busy progressive metal, full of muscular musical workouts from a cast of players willing and able to bust some serious chops. But whether the songwriting carries quite as much heft as the musicianship is another question.
Portnoy, Sherinian and Bumblefoot share the writing, with Soto penning his own lyrics. Sheehan’s not having any writing input might explain why the bass doesn’t have the same sort of forward presence in this group as it does when Sheehan plays in The Winery Dogs or any of his instrumental projects, although he does take a standout solo in Resurrection Day and a short break in New World Today just as a reminder that one of rock’s premier masters of the low end is in the house.
Since his departure from Dream Theater, Portnoy seems to have developed an aversion to drum solos, and he’s spoken in interviews about preferring to play another song rather than a solo in live situations. But while he never takes a moment alone in the spotlight on MMXX to really stretch out, his signature is all over this music: there’s plenty of machine-gun double kick playing on Goodbye Divinity and King Of Delusion, there’s a wickedly sharp drum intro to Fall To Ascend, and the grooves always sound huge and heavy. The real instrumental star is Sherinian, who uncorks a series of rousing solos throughout the album. It’s certainly a side to his playing that’s different from his solo work, which tends to lean more towards 70s fusion. On this album, Sherinian gets to enter full prog god mode, giving Bumblefoot’s guitar playing more than a run for its money for sheer energy and bravado. The only potential downside to having so many big hitters in the group is that it all ends up being very dense, and without much space around Soto’s vocals. Whenever he’s not singing, someone immediately jumps in to fill the gap with a flurry of notes.
MMXX
INSIDEOUT/SONY
“Portnoy has ditched the drum solos, but his signature is all over the music.”
Goodbye Divinity kicks off the album with some weighty riffage, establishing that the Sons have one foot in prog and the other in classic metal. It’s certainly headbang-friendly. Soto has a commanding presence as a singer, having the power to project his vocals through the mix, and in King Of Delusion he channels James Hetfield with his ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’s.
At times his lyrics can sound perfunctory, as though he had to write something so he just rattled off some rhyming couplets. Among the offenders on this front is Asphyxiation: ‘I’m your creation, your new sensation/I’m your temptation, ’cos I’m your asphyxiation.’ Is he throttling someone, or merely stifling them? Will this be prog’s #BlurredLines moment? (No. The answer is no.) The lyrics to Resurrection Day are disappointingly banal, Soto declaring: ‘It’s coming.’ It makes you miss Ronnie James Dio weaving his tales about dragons and mountains, although Soto does throw in a reference to a demon being crucified. Admittedly what he’s trying to say in the song is made no clearer, if he’s even trying to say anything at all. There’s an art to writing great nonsense – listen to half of Marc Bolan’s lyrics with T.Rex, but those work as a form of delightful whimsy. Who doesn’t want to ride a white swan, or bang a gong and get it on? But on tracks like offer incoherent religious imagery delivered with none of the humour that makes Bolan’s writing so endearing.
