When Prog and Power Unite

Few bands have a longer or more storied career with When Prog and Power Unite than Haken. Our program was broadcasting the band even prior to the release of their debut album Aquarius. Here we are 10 years later and the band have just released their fifth album Vector, so no surprise we are featuring it on this week’s episode. The album has an intentionally heavy approach and doesn’t let off the gas much at all during its forty-five minute run time. The band is currently on tour through North America and will tromp through South America and Europe next year. You can find information on ordering the album and those tour dates at the band’s site here.

Headspace – Fall of America

Bent Knee – Holy Ghost

Leprous – From the Flame

Haken – Nil By Mouth

Anathema – Thin Air

Fates Warning – Another Perfect Day

Queensryche – Prophecy

Phideaux – Metro Deathfire

Coheed and Cambria – Love Protocol

Riverside – Wasteland

Flor De Loto – Quinta Dimension

Beardfish – Roulette

Haken – Veil

Shadow Gallery – Room V

Steven Wilson – Arriving Somewhere, But Not Here

Dream the Electric Sleep – Let the Light Flood In

In the Presence of Wolves – Man of the Times

Blind Guardian – Another Holy War

Star One – Human See, Human Do

Toehider – Whatever Makes You Feel Superior

Geddy Lee – Working at Perfekt

Erik Norlander – Heavy Metal Symphony

Planet P Project – Join the Parade

Marillion – White Russian

Haken – A Cell Divides

Another year, another new prog festival. Now in its second year I got to visit ProgStock in Rahway, NJ for the first time this past weekend. Myself and many friends were drawn by the rare chance to see IQ stateside. We ended up seeing a variety of amazing music, with a nice combination of local acts, well known headliners, and some rare or unusual sets to round things off. One of the artists performing at the festival was Canada’s Mystery, whose latest album Lies and Butterflies is our featured album this week. Released over the summer and debuted at Night of the Prog in Germany the album has pleased the fan base and was delivered in full at ProgStock.

Along with the featured album and a lot of songs from the festival we covered a few new albums we didn’t get to last show such as those from Michael Romeo and Spock’s Beard. In addition we opened with the second new single from Haken‘s forthcoming album Vector which can be seen below. Also this past week Coheed and Cambria released their new album The Unheavenly Creatures, and a video from that is included as well.

2018-10-10

Haken – Puzzle Box

Mystery – Looking For Something Else

Cell15 – Street Lights

3rDegree – The Future Doesn’t Need You

Coheed and Cambria – Black Sunday

Ayreon – Castle Hall

Michael Romeo – Black

Orpheus Nine – Eightfold Way

Dave Kerzner – Static

Saga – On the Loose

Phideaux – From Hydrogen to Love

Mystery – Chrsalis

Enchant – Juggling Knives

IQ – From the Outside In

Riverside – Acid Rain

Spock’s Beard – Somebody’s Home

IZZ – Can’t Feel the Earth, Part IV

Evership – Silver Light

Mystery – Something to Beleive In

Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Trilogy

Shadow Gallery – Room V

Sorry for the wait! Going forward I’m going to try (I know, said it before!) to do this on something of a more regular basis, hopefully monthly, which exact days and times announced closer to the actual show times. In any case thank you everyone who joined us for the first live radio show in nearly a year and all those who download the podcast. After such time off some technical problems were pretty much inevitable, and so I apologize for the microphone levels and my voice sounding a bit wonky and distorted at times as a result.

It would be near impossible to recount all the new releases talked about during the show, so let’s start by saying in the past year I’ve been to RoSfest, Night of the Prog, and ProgPower and will be attending my first Progstock next month and recommend checking all of those out. In addition there are some releases that are very recent or coming up we talked about so let’s review those.

Things start of course with our featured album The Courage to Be, the debut release from Lux Terminus. The album is mostly instrumental and mostly without guitars, relying very heavily on the keyboard work of Vikram Shankar, who as it turned out was also on the recent Redemption album Long Night’s Journey Into Day. It is my favorite instrumental album of the past few years and one I truly hope everyone checks out! You can buy it directly from the band here or check out the video below.

Out recently or soon is Phideuax (buy here), Kingcrow (buy here), Riverside (buy here), and of course Haken (buy here). And I’ll include a video from each of those releases below.

Hope to see everyone in a few weeks!

2018-09-12

Redemption – Indulge in Color

Kingcrow – Drenched

Lux Terminus – Electrocommunion

Haken – The Good Doctor

Fates Warning – Seven Stars

Devin Townsend Project – Bad Devil

The Neal Morse Band – Makes No Sense

Riverside – Vale of Tears

Flor de Loto – Locamotive

Phideaux – We Only Have Eyes For You

Ayreon – And the Druids Turned to Stone

Lux Terminus – Effusion

Between the Buried and Me – The Proverbial Bellow

Orphaned Land – Like Orpheus

Amorphis – Amongst Stars

Frequency Drift – Electricity

Lux Terminus – Miles Away

Rausch – Irked

Toehider – How Do Ghosts Work?

The Sea Within – An Eye For an Eye For an Eye

Cell15 – Street Lights

The Fierce and the Dead – 1991

3rDegree – Connecting

Lines in the Sky – A Great Deal

Lux Terminus – The Road Home

Fans from all over the world (54 countries!) came to see Arjen Lucassen bring Ayreon to the stage for the first time in 22 years, and I was lucky enough to see some of the shows. They took place in the Netherlands over September 15, 16, and 17 at the 013 in Tilburg. You can learn more about the shows here.

In this new format that straddles the line between our typical musical based show and a strict review I talk about my experience at the shows with songs thrown in here and there for good measure. Let me know what you like or don’t about this!

Tracks used in the podcast are as follows:

Ayreon – Prologue > Dreamtime

Ayreon – Blackboard > The Theory of Everything, Part 1 > The Theory of Everything, Part 2

Damian Wilson – Thrill Me

Toehider – This Conversation is Over

Nightmare – Ikarus

Star One – Intergalactic Space Crusaders

Ayreon – Everybody Dies!

And of course, some videos of some of this material for you to enjoy:

Band: Iris Divine

Album: The Static and the Noise

Available: October 6, 2017

Reviewer: Mason

Iris Divine Online

Order The Static and the Noise

Two years ago Iris Divine made a huge splash on my radar with their debut album Karma Sown. I named them my newcomer of the year, guitarist Navid Rashid my guitarist of the year, and my third overall album of the year, a sentiment I still agree with two years later.  Following up Karma Sown was going to be a tall task, and I believe that The Static and The Noise accomplishes this without sounding like Karma Sown part two.

If you are not familiar with the band, Iris Divine is a three piece outfit consisting of guitarist/vocalist Navid Rashid, Kris Combs on drums, keys, and programming, and Brian Dobbs on bass.  As with many three piece bands, their sound is very well constructed and cohesive, which I attribute to avoiding the “too many cooks in the kitchen” metaphor. I would classify the band as a heavier progressive metal band, and their metal backgrounds really shine through.

Their debut album had a bright sound and generally left me in a good mood, which I feel like it fits the album title and artwork. The Static and The Noise title and artwork also forebodes the feel of the album, and takes on a darker and angrier tone, while addressing those topics that we sometimes want to shy from in casual conversation. I was taken off guard on my first listen because even though I was prepared for this tone based on Kickstarter updates, there was no hiding from it in parts. But that’s what great art and literature do sometimes – throw issues in your face that aren’t the most pleasant to address. The aggressive tone starts from the first note and doesn’t let up anywhere through its 46 minute run time. However I don’t leave the album in an angry mood, but a contemplative one.  After the initial shock, The Static and The Noise took over my listening time. I received the promo the same day three other albums arrived at my door, and two weeks later I still haven’t gotten around to listening to two of those albums from established artists I like because I keep coming back to this one.  Every few listens, my favorite track seems to change. I had high praise for Navid’s guitar work on the first album, and those talents certainly returned on this album. In addition I think his singing and song writing talents are very much on display on this album. Kris’s contributions in drumming and rounding out the sound with keys are even more impressive when taken into consideration he lives practically on the other side of the country. The darker feel of the album would be hard to achieve without the tone and driving bass lines that Brian achieved. Nothing on the album feels forced, and it sounds like this is the album the band really wanted to make, everything on the album just seems to exude feeling; the bass is heavy, the screams are angsty, the vocals are emotive, and the lyrics don’t require liner notes to get the message. Perhaps most importantly the music perfectly compliments the theme of every song.

The lyrics of “Like Glass” ask you to “Swallow the bitter medicine, open your eyes”. That might be the best advice for approaching this album, your first listen might catch you off guard, but this album will, given enough time heal what ails you, and it will reward you immensely when you open your eyes. There is still time to get in on near the ground floor for this band that really deserves to break through the underground scene.  I can’t see this not being an album raking in some end of year awards from myself and others.

Mason’s grade: A

Hello there, it’s been quite a while! As I’ve eluded to during previous shows life has changed a lot for me over the past year or so. I took a new job with a much longer commute and a heavier workload. My girlfriend and I purchased our first house and have since stocked it with two more cats bringing our total up to four. And, I’ll admit, I’ve been feeding my gaming urge substantially more as well. All this has not only taken up a significant amount of time, but has made it increasingly difficult to do a scheduled broadcast every week.

Let me just say I’ve always prided myself in the prep for my shows and the three hour window of broadcast is only part of the time dedicated to each episode. There is preparing the set, preparing detailed notes and links to go with the set, promoting the show, then doing the show, then preparing the post and podcast, and finally promoting after that is released. With work, travel, and new home issues to attend to being able to broadcast at the end of the day just didn’t happen with enough frequency.

Initially I was going to put the show on an indefinite hiatus, and I suppose we unofficially had that as our last podcast was from May, however I feel like we have a possible avenue to move forward with this show that I’ve been doing nearly 10 years at this point.

Into the foreseeable future we’re going to be focussing on podcasts and new formats for the show, to be recorded and released as time permits. We will continue to do reviews and interviews. We will continue to do music mixer discussions about current and general topics. We will continue to bring new and exciting music to your ears. The difference is now it won’t happen every Wednesday. It’ll happen when we are sparked and want to bring you something. I foresee some shorter more focussed musical podcasts hopefully getting into more depth on artists. I’m also open to new ideas and formats as we push ahead.

As for the very immediate future here is what’s on the docket. Mason has a review in the works for the upcoming Iris Divine album The Static and the Noise. I’m going to be doing a show to recap my recent trip to the Netherlands to see the historical Ayreon performances. I’ll be doing a similar show as well focused on my experiences during Haken‘s recently concluded 10th Anniversary Tour here in North America, hitting on their involvement in The Shattered Fortress as well.

Thank you as always to those that have always listened live, downloaded podcasts, and given your feedback and support to the show. I hope we can continue to connect into the future and help one another to enjoy all the beautiful music out there for us.

Nick

In an alternate universe where great music gets priority to work we would have featured Resolve, the third album from Pennsylvania based band MindMaze three weeks ago when it was timely. But we’re rolling with the punches and finally giving the album its time to shine now. Mason and I did a split review of the album which you can read or listen to here, so I won’t go into much further details about our thoughts on the album in this post. What I will tell you is that the band is currently on tour, so if you find a city near you on the list here I’d definitely go out and see them. As an added bonus you will witness something that I have not, despite being local to the band and seeing them many times. For this tour they’re joined by Jonah from Pyramaze to add some keyboards to their live show.  I am truly jealous to all the people who are getting to witness it, and hope those that do put on the proper pressure to make live keyboards a future necessity! You can buy the new album here and check out the latest video below.

We also took a lot of time this show to talk about my recent trip to RoSfest, which is always an excellent experience in beautiful Gettysburg, PA. This year the festival featured Kyros, Moon Safari, The Aaron Clift Experiment, Unified Past, Unit-DB, The Neal Morse Band, The Fierce & the Dead, Evership, Edensong, and Anglagard. As always the theater staff was friendly, the sound was great, everything ran on time, and the after parties were killer! You really can’t ask for more from a land-based festival these days. You can check out the festival and keep up to date on next years announced bands here.

We also played some new artists on the program tonight, some of which have their albums up in full on bandcamp. Those would be Cobalt Blue (here) and The Black Light (here). You can also grab the newest album from Elysium Theory from CDBaby here.

And of course, as always, there is plenty of new music to get to. Big Big Train have just released Grimspound (here), and Ayreon has released The Source (here). Voyager has Ghost Mile (here) coming out in a few days, as does Rikard Sjoblom’s Gungfly with On Her Journey to the Sun (here). And of course there are videos from each below.

2017-05-17

MindMaze – Drown Me

L’Anima – My Dying Cell

Cobalt Blue – Bereaved

Rikard Sjolbom’s Gungfly – On Her Journey to the Sun

Edge of Reality – Moldy Banana Bread

Kyros – Persistence of Vision

Moon Safari – The World’s Best Dreamers

Elysium Theory – Long Count

Ayreon – The Source Will Flow

MindMaze – Abandon

The Aaron Clift Experiment – Fragments of Sleep

Arjen Lucassen has been the genesis of many projects: The Gentle Storm, Star One, Stream of Passion, and Guilt Machine all started with Arjen, but no project comes with quite the fanfare of Ayreon. It was the project that made Arjen a household name in the progressive music community, and the one that continues to deliver all-star casts on every album. This of course holds true for The Source, due out April 28th on Mascot Label Group. James LaBrie (Dream Theater), Russell Allen (Symphony X), Hansi Kursch (Blind Guardian), and Tobias Sammet (Avantasia) account for only a third of the vocal talent on the album. It’s nearly unfair to other bands that can struggle to have one vocalist of that calibre, while The Source manages to have twelve amazing singers, as well as instrumentalists like Guthrie Govan (Steven Wilson) and Paul Gilbert (Mr. Big). This album has all the elements fans have come to expect, and the array of different musical styles and voices will make it easy to draw in new fans.

In our twenty minute interview Arjen discusses getting a new album out to people, the interaction he has with his fans, the way technology has allowed fans to better experience his music, and of course the upcoming Ayreon Universe live shows happening in the Netherlands this September. Arjen revealed that this effort to properly bring much of the Ayreon catalog to the stage for the first time will be the culmination of two years of preparation. And while the shows have already sold out, a live release has been promised to document the experience. So listen in and take a glimpse into the world of the rock-opera master!

Buy The Source

Ayreon Online

Ayreon Facebook

Ayreon Youtube

 

Fates Warning are a band that certainly evolved since their early days, and saw success past their initial mark as well. That said, many fans, especially the more metal oriented, have a special place in their hearts for the first three albums featuring the vocals of John Arch. Perhaps it’s the substantial difference in style between Arch and current vocalist Ray Alder, or simply the time that has passed since Awaken the Guardian was released in 1986, but the band hasn’t been keen on playing the earliest material in the past decade or two. With that in mind it’s no surprise the buzz that was caused when the band announced they’d be playing two very special festival shows playing Awaken in its entirety with the lineup from that album. ProgPower USA and Keep it True in Germany were the lucky spots for these historic performances, both of which have been captured for the upcoming release Awaken the Guardian Live.

In this 20 minute interview John and I discussed what it was like returning to the stage for these incredibly special shows, his working relationship with Jim Matheos, and the possibility of a new Arch/Matheos disc at some point in the future.

Buy Awaken the Guardian Live

Fates Warning Online

Arch/Matheos Online

Network security protects the functionality of the network ensuring that only authorized users and devices have access to it. The security model of the network consists of a private, trusted group of nodes and a public, publicly viewable, network. There are other features that make network security a vast topic. The public network is broadcasted to all nodes with their public IP address. The public IP address is assigned to each node to connect with other nodes over a local network interface, such as a Ethernet or 802.11 wireless link.

To protect the functionality of the network, nodes run unique software code known as access control lists (ACLs). A Linux distribution also runs special configurations to limit the functionality of the network. For example, IPsec supports a variety of cipher suites, known as modes, and a number of IPsec modes have different security features, and there are also other software that help with network protection, which you can find in this site online.

Network security protects the functionality of the network ensuring that only authorized users and devices have access to it. The security model of the network consists of a private, trusted group of nodes and a public, publicly viewable, network. The public network is broadcasted to all nodes with their public IP address. The public IP address is assigned to each node to connect with other nodes over a local network interface, such as a Ethernet or 802.11 wireless link.

To protect the functionality of the network, nodes run unique software code known as access control lists (ACLs). A Linux distribution also runs special configurations to limit the functionality of the network. For example, IPsec supports a variety of cipher suites, known as modes, and a number of IPsec modes have different security features.

Most operating systems and computing devices use the IPsec software to negotiate their use of IPsec. For more information, see IPsec Operations.

The following table shows the global IPsec configuration for the TCP-IP network that supports Transport Layer Security (TLS):

IPsec Configuration for the TCP/IP Network Teredo Tunnels

Teredo sessions are protected by an encapsulation of the tunnel header with a security group.

TLS/IPsec can use an IPsec security group to define a network segment. The host must be configured with a security group and a key pair.

Protocol, Proposal-Specific, and Mode Nodes

Mode Modes Advantages Disadvantages Configuring both configurations for a machine that supports TLS. Servers encrypt on both sides. Diffie-Hellman groups may be used, so servers can encrypt before sending the packet. Configuring only mode 1. Assumes all machines support TLS, but does not provide protection for Client Key Exchange. Diffie-Hellman groups are not used, so no certificate is needed for TLS. Only able to protect an encrypted TCP tunnel. Requires the remote machine to be configured with a certificate.