|
Section
A return with their second album, the conceptual
‘Parallel Lives’. The album
is the follow up to the acclaimed debut,
‘The Seventh Sign’ (2003 Lion
Music) and sees the band establish a trademark
sound and deliver a killer album with their
own unique brand of melodic progressive
metal.
Section
A are led by the vocal talents of Andy Engberg,
the virtuoso guitar work of Torben Enevoldsen
and new drummer Johan Koleberg (Ex-Lion’s
Share) who replaced Andreas Lill (Vanden
Plas). Bass duties were performed by the
albums engineer Pontus Egberg (Ex-Lion’s
Share) in a guest role. The album also features
appearances by Mats Olausson (Ex-Yngwie
Malmsteen), Lotta Malmström, Elizabeth
Kirwan and Ulf "Uffe" Pettersson.
From
the start of writing the band decided to
do a concept album. Conny Welén had
an idea for the story from the beginning,
so that part was in place pretty quickly
and was built upon with Andy Engberg. Torben
Enevoldsen wrote all the music for the album
as usual, but didn’t present the new
material for the other guys before he felt
that everything was as it should be i.e.
a completed album musically. Andy and Conny
received all the new songs from Torben just
before Christmas of 2003 and they then started
working on the story and the actual lyrics.
In April of 2004, the drums were recorded
in Stockholm. Pontus Egberg did all the
engineering and our new drummer, Johan Koleberg
(Ex-Lion’s Share), delivers a stunning
performance. The band’s engineer,
Pontus Egberg (Ex-Lion’s Share), liked
the music so much that he offered to do
the bass for the entire album. The guys
accepted stating “it was a true pleasure
having him aboard”. Torben felt that
music required a few keyboard solos for
this album, so he asked Mats Olausson (Ex-Yngwie
Malmsteen) to participate. He accepted and
since he was staying with his mother in
Sweden at the time, it all came together
very fast and without any complications.
(He lives in Thailand).
Torben
received all the vocals and the completed
story in April of 2005. Already quite a
bit behind schedule, the plan was to mix
and master the album right away. EnevoldsenI
went to Torben Lysholm’s studio, Tune
Town, at the end of April to start mixing
Parallel Lives. Unfortunately, this initial
mix wasn’t really good enough, so
the band started all over again… The
final mix and mastering was completed by
September and the band were now all extremely
happy with the final result indeed feeling
it does the music and storyline justice.
On the performances of drummer Johan Koleberg
and guest bassist Pontus Egberg Torben states,
“Johan approaches the drumming quite
differently from Andreas, which in my opinion
makes for a more groovy bottom. Also adding
an actual bass player to the line-up helped
matters quite a bit in that department”.
On
the album Torben Enevoldsen comments, “This
album differs to our first in many ways.
I personally learned a lot from making The
Seventh Sign and I think that that is particularly
audible in the way these new songs have
been written and arranged. Lyrically, this
new album is a concept piece based around
the story of William, a guy, who by unknown
forces gets the gift to travel between parallel
universes – yet he is unable to control
this travelling. This happens once he falls
asleep, whilst he’s away from one
universe time stands still. At first he
believes it’s all just a terrifying
dream but he soon learns that dream is in
fact reality”. The storyline expands
on this premise and travels through a few
different twists and turns (for more info
see the Lion Music website) all of which
are reflected by the music as well.
Parallel
Lives is an exciting progressive metal experience
that is set to put Section A in the upper
echelon of the genre.
» Well crafted second album from Section
A.
» Band features members of Vanden
Plas, Lion Share and Yngwie Malmsteen.
» Torben Enevoldsen has a strong following
for his solo albums released on Lion Music.
» Concept album.
» Superb artwork.
| 
