« The State of WCYG | Main | WCYG is Back Up »

February 18, 2003

New OSI And Styx CDs Are Out Today

I should be receiving my copy of the new and first Office of Strategic Influence CD in the mail today or tomorrow. It's a side project of Mike Portnoy's, and reunites him with former Dream Theater keyboardist Kevin Moore. I usually enjoy the side projects of members of my favorite bands; I'll post a followup if it's a stinker. (But I highly doubt that.)
Also, the current incarnation of Styx has a CD called Cyclorama coming out today. I haven't checked out Styx since purchasing the Return to Paradise DVD (a 1997 concert). The current lineup includes James Young, Tommy Shaw, Larry Gowan, Glen Burtnik, and Todd Sucherman. I know of Larry Gowan from his association with Rush's Alex Lifeson in the 90's, but I haven't heard him with Styx. I thought Todd Sucherman was a great drummer after seeing him on the Paradise DVD. I'm probably going to pick up the new CD later this week, after the roads clear up a bit and things are more normal. They've got three of the songs from the album available for download as 160kbps MP3s; I've checked them out and they're actually quite good. I've been a casual fan of Styx since my dad shared his LP of Paradise Theater with me back in the 80's.
I've added some band links to the "Quick Links" block on the right. The local band I have listed, Weapons For Peace, has a new CD out that I'm currently listening to called Individual Revolution. Pretty cool stuff! It's very hard rock - I hesitate to call it "metal" because the vocals are quite melodic. Recommended!

Posted by Alex Harden on February 18, 2003 1:32 PM |

Comments

I received it in the mail yesterday. Very cool packaging. I was able to listen to about 2/3 of it today at work. Very cool! Don, you will want to check out the Steven Wilson track (shutDOWN).

I'm going to listen to it a bit more intently this weekend (and on better headphones!!!) and try to post AlexHarden.org's first official CD review.

I will probably order the Styx CD from Amazon soon!

Posted by: Alex | February 21, 2003 4:03 PM

http://www.theendrecords.com/ has OSI's limited edition release for $13. I just ordered it - at that price, I can't pass it up like I did Transatlantic's second album (good God, I wish I hadn't spent $30 on their first...).

Posted by: Don | February 25, 2003 9:16 AM

Nice price - I got mine for $14+shipping from CD Universe. I've never heard the TA stuff - I'll have to check that out sometime.

OSI goes in an interesting direction - kind of what I suspected, given what I've heard of Moore's "Chroma Key" stuff. I'll have to check out some more Fates Warning albums - I own "Parallels" but never really got into it.

I'm going to give it an extended listen this weekend, but from what I've heard so far, this album is an excellent piece of work.

Posted by: Alex | February 27, 2003 8:53 AM

Post a comment

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)