The Power Of Rock
$ US
Tracklist
01
Sure You Will 03:46
02
Free 03:20
03
Go 04:16
04
All Gone Now 05:13
05
Home Was Good 05:03
06
Bigger Wave 04:30
07
Kicking 03:52
08
Better 04:06
09
Simple Life 04:00
10
Once 06:34
11
Our Town 03:20
01
Osidea 9 03:33
02
Set It On Fire 03:42
03
Communicant 03:47
04
When You're Ready (demo) 03:09
05
Remain Calm 04:08
06
Old War 01:06
Description
2006, If there's a sling or an arrow that could be directed against progressive metal - or worse, a prog metal supergroup - it's that the work often turns out to sound like a loose-bolted, duct-taped monster resembling the sum of disparate parts, those parts churning away at pure, conventionally unconventional progressive metal. OSI (featuring Fates Warning guitarist and figurehead Jim Matheos, Dream Theater drum giant Mike Portnoy and keyboardist Kevin Moore from Chroma Key and early in his career, Dream Theater), as the following story reveals, could have turned out that way.
But it most definitely has not. Not by a long shot. Jim reiterates the above characterization of the journey. "Certainly Kevin had a lot of influence, especially since he's doing 90 percent of the vocals and a lot of the editing and sequencing; so you're going to get that in there. I would agree that at times it sounds like a heavy version of Chroma Key. This thing has taken so many turns from the inception to the final product. It was going to go in the direction of a prog metal-type thing. It was really my idea as a side project to do something outside of Fates. Mike and I wanted to work together for a long time so we talked about doing this and it was going to be in the prog metal mold. There was a 25 minutes song, a lot of those parts of which became these songs. And when Kevin came along, he started steering it in a different direction, a direction that I was really interested in, but not something that I had thought of before we started working on it. I think Mike and I still have our prog roots and like that kind of music and Kevin has kind of gotten away from that. And that part of his personality and his style really took hold of the music and brought it in a different direction."
But with three writers and three leaders in the band, a lot push, pull and play helped mold the eventual results. However, the parts of the trio can still, most pertinently, be defined. Mike turns in a shining, shimmery cymbal-smashing percussion storm of a performance. Jim blends acoustics with crushing riffs, riffs that hint at the unease and doom of prime Fates, exploring an emotional space that works well with Kevin's laconic, world-weary vocals. And Kevin... well, his vast array of technologies can be heard throughout, the man most often going for organic sounds spiced with slices and tweaks and chirps from some distant Planet X, Moore's ethereal radio of the mind drifting through the tracks in the form of discernible and unintelligible spoken word bits, pummeled by music that sets one to ponder. Loudly.
Jim on Mike: "I think he did what he always does: he played his ass off and did a great job. He's amazing. Hearing him on record and seeing him live so many times wasn't the same as being in the studio with him and watching him work; it's incredible. I think for him it was a little bit harder than he was used to because... it was actually a little harder for all of us, because each one of us is used to being in control of what we do. We might have had to compromise and bend a little bit and I think it was particularly hard for Mike, to take direction in the studio, which took him a little while to get used to, but he did a great job. I think he's happy he did that because it made him go places that he probably wouldn't have gone otherwise."
Once the firepower of the brunt of the record is expended, all comes to a cozy close with the album's most poignant track, a song called 'Standby (Looks Like Rain)' taking a precious two minutes to cap the experience, Moore's smooth and tender voice accompanying more cosmic chatter to the gentle strums of Matheos on an acoustic.
And finally, something I'd been wondering from the beginning, why the title OSI?
"Basically OSI, or the Office Of Strategic Influence, was an ill-fated agency that was dreamt up by the Pentagon, I think, shortly after 9/11. And their purpose was basically to disseminate information mostly abroad, and if need be, false information, to put the U.S. and U.S. policy in a more favorable light, particularly in countries that don't view us as friendly.
But it most definitely has not. Not by a long shot. Jim reiterates the above characterization of the journey. "Certainly Kevin had a lot of influence, especially since he's doing 90 percent of the vocals and a lot of the editing and sequencing; so you're going to get that in there. I would agree that at times it sounds like a heavy version of Chroma Key. This thing has taken so many turns from the inception to the final product. It was going to go in the direction of a prog metal-type thing. It was really my idea as a side project to do something outside of Fates. Mike and I wanted to work together for a long time so we talked about doing this and it was going to be in the prog metal mold. There was a 25 minutes song, a lot of those parts of which became these songs. And when Kevin came along, he started steering it in a different direction, a direction that I was really interested in, but not something that I had thought of before we started working on it. I think Mike and I still have our prog roots and like that kind of music and Kevin has kind of gotten away from that. And that part of his personality and his style really took hold of the music and brought it in a different direction."
But with three writers and three leaders in the band, a lot push, pull and play helped mold the eventual results. However, the parts of the trio can still, most pertinently, be defined. Mike turns in a shining, shimmery cymbal-smashing percussion storm of a performance. Jim blends acoustics with crushing riffs, riffs that hint at the unease and doom of prime Fates, exploring an emotional space that works well with Kevin's laconic, world-weary vocals. And Kevin... well, his vast array of technologies can be heard throughout, the man most often going for organic sounds spiced with slices and tweaks and chirps from some distant Planet X, Moore's ethereal radio of the mind drifting through the tracks in the form of discernible and unintelligible spoken word bits, pummeled by music that sets one to ponder. Loudly.
Jim on Mike: "I think he did what he always does: he played his ass off and did a great job. He's amazing. Hearing him on record and seeing him live so many times wasn't the same as being in the studio with him and watching him work; it's incredible. I think for him it was a little bit harder than he was used to because... it was actually a little harder for all of us, because each one of us is used to being in control of what we do. We might have had to compromise and bend a little bit and I think it was particularly hard for Mike, to take direction in the studio, which took him a little while to get used to, but he did a great job. I think he's happy he did that because it made him go places that he probably wouldn't have gone otherwise."
Once the firepower of the brunt of the record is expended, all comes to a cozy close with the album's most poignant track, a song called 'Standby (Looks Like Rain)' taking a precious two minutes to cap the experience, Moore's smooth and tender voice accompanying more cosmic chatter to the gentle strums of Matheos on an acoustic.
And finally, something I'd been wondering from the beginning, why the title OSI?
"Basically OSI, or the Office Of Strategic Influence, was an ill-fated agency that was dreamt up by the Pentagon, I think, shortly after 9/11. And their purpose was basically to disseminate information mostly abroad, and if need be, false information, to put the U.S. and U.S. policy in a more favorable light, particularly in countries that don't view us as friendly.
