Fabled minds
Project Paradise
Thousand Island / Lockjaw
Memories can lead to strange places. At times they can cross a boundary between fiction and reality and events can migrate into real imagined things. Much like the whispering game if pass it on a memory may have its roots in truth but over time can become what you feel was the case rather than what us.
Now that I have cleared all that disclaimer garnish I can tell you that the first concept album I heard was War of the worlds. My brother, Joe, owned the record and was a big fan. As part of my musical indoctrination he made me listen to it. I was far more interested in my other brothers punk rock but hey if I pretended to like Jeff Wayne I could stay in the same room as my big brother. It sure beat watching the news on tv. And so I got the concept of a concept album.
My next recollection of it is the subhumans who had one side of their album taken up by one song. That was enough of a concept for me. A life in one side of the album. I often wondered what gave the band the confidence to do such a thing as it rallied against the punk spirit of three chords and the truth over a short time span. I haven’t really thought about these events in recent years but Fabled Minds new release has brought me back.
The band have created a record based on a dystopian story of a world digitised and ruled by Artificial Intelligence. Blade runner it isn’t but are we really too far away from a world ruled by technological “advances”? I’d hazard a guess saying we may not. In much the same of a world struck by fear of Covid where we jumped off the merry go round and avoided the everyday humdrum this record imagines streets where machines do the thinking and create the order of the day. A world where we remember a time when this was not the case.
Musically it is very much like Propogandhi putting such an album together in a slightly slower down Bad Religion disguise. 13 well written and thoroughly thought through songs with beats, guitars and not too much shouting going on.
Explore this adventure and prepare for this world, is it one you want?
niallhope
