Fresh from last year’s psychedelic Ritual I & II, Crown Lands are back with an even more ambitious concept piece that embraces not just their love of Rush, but also Yes and world-building tales. The Canadian duo, who consider Apocalypse to be a love letter to their inner nerdiness, tell Prog about their dreams of creating a better world for everyone.
“Ten thousand decibels is the required volume in the universe to create a black hole,” says Crown Lands guitarist/bassist/ keyboardist Kevin Comeau. “As a live band, that’s what we hope to eventually do. Sadly, we’re only sitting at around 100db right now – but give us time.”
It’s safe to say that Canadian duo Crown Lands are ambitious. In addition to their goal of altering the very fabric of space and time, new album Apocalypse continues what’s becoming one of progressive rock’s most elaborate storylines, the kind of tale that might be best told via the medium of infographics. It’s complicated, as they say.
For those who need reminding, the story really began on The Oracle, the 13-minute, five-part final track on 2021’s White Buffalo EP. To complicate things – even at this early stage – The Oracle was the third in a trilogy of songs, the second of which had appeared on the previous year’s self-titled debut album.
The third part, Mountain, was on the Rise Over Run EP in 2017. The convoluted yarn continued on 2023’s Fearless album, but the band haven’t finished yet. “We’re actually currently writing the sequel to that,” says Comeau, “but Apocalypse serves as the prequel.”
Still with us? There are other layers of complication in the story of Fearless, who awakens from cryosleep at the bottom of the ocean to find his planet terraformed (deliberately modified) by a terrifying corporate conglomerate. This part of the tale is told on Starlifter: Fearless Pt. II, the nine-movement Fearless opener, in which the character – essentially acting as a one-man army – rises against this evil syndicate and its army of radicalised minions.
“We storyboarded a lot,” says vocalist/drummer Cody Bowles. “That’s my favourite part of it: getting into the story of it and developing character arcs, or being creative in world-building. Being fans – nerds! – with a big love for the greats like The Lord Of The Rings, Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars and Star Trek, all of those things conglomerate into this massive love letter to our inner nerdiness, and we combine it with stuff that has allegories for our world and things that are happening within it.”
So the story draws parallels with the perilous political climate in the US and the controversial activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement? “Yeah, absolutely,” says Bowles. “Apocalypse is a story of the fall of Fearless’ planet, but also of the main antagonist, who we introduce here. His name is Black Star, and his planet falls victim to cannibalisation under the stress of radicalisation, greed and corporate overreach.
“The first song, Foot Soldiers Of The Syndicate, is about the radicalisation of people. How do they become radicalised? How do they become a tool of this military arm, and how do they get wrapped up in something when they don’t even know the scope of what they’re dealing with? What creates that core situation?”
The drummer has some theories: “I think people feel like they want to belong to something when they don’t have power; they feel weak, and they feel radicalised by how toxic masculinity is represented in the media. Some men fall down this rabbit hole of wanting more power when they feel helpless.”
“You push people into desperation,” Comeau adds. “It’s quite easy, really. You just take away people’s financial autonomy, and they’ll do things they wouldn’t normally do quite quickly. I think we’ve seen a lot of young people radicalised to the right. It’s weird seeing people who are younger than ourselves, absorbed by social media, who have grabbed onto a lot of these fascist ideals.
“And I think a lot of it comes from seeing zero stability and not seeing anything improving. When you make things bad enough for normal people to want to join up in this violent regime, it’s going to backfire. And, yes, Black Star has this moment. He’s a tragic anti-hero. Well, not an anti-hero – just tragic, really. Everything he fought for is gone. When he gets back to his planet, his wife and his child have succumbed to the war, and he’s like, ‘My God, what have I done?’”
We went out for coffee with Nick Raskulinecz and it felt like no time had passed. It felt really special again
“His whole planet is collateral damage for the spiral of ruin he’s set upon the universe,” says Bowles.
“Spiral of ruin!” says Comeau, delighted by this new turn of phrase. “Write that down! This is basically how this entire record gets made!”
Unlike Fearless, which came out via the duo’s now-expired deal with Spinefarm/Universal, Apocalypse is released by InsideOutMusic, home to Dream Theater, Devin Townsend, Big Big Train and other prog-minded folk. It’s a more natural base for Crown Lands; but with major label budgets a thing of the past, the band have adjusted, recording much of the album at Chalet Studios in Uxbridge, a small township 45 miles north-east of Toronto.
(Image credit: Lane Dorsey)
It’s the space where Rush completed pre-production work on Presto, Roll The Bones, Counterparts and Test For Echo, and it’s become a home away from home for Crown Lands, who’ve been using it since 2020. Last year’s meditative Ritual I & II was recorded there, and gave both musicians the confidence that they could successfully make an album without the kind of fancy studios major labels expect their expensive charges to use.
And then, with the first tracks in the bag, they received a visit from an old friend, producer Nick Raskulinecz, who worked with them on 2021 single Context: Fearless Pt. 1. “We went out for coffee with Nick, and it just felt like no time had passed,” says Comeau. “It just felt really special again, and he invited us down to his studio in Nashville to do some writing together. That was our first time really writing with Nick, rather than having him just producing.”
We’re like, ‘Remember that part in Relayer where it goes crazy? This is where we do that!
The first song they came up with was Casting Stones – which, in typically unstraightforward Crown Lands fashion, doesn’t appear on Apocalypse, despite being one of the pair’s favourite tracks from the sessions, because “it didn’t quite fit into the story”. It will eventually appear on a deluxe edition of the album.
Back to Raskulinecz: “The music and the writing process were just so good that we wanted to do more,” says Bowles. “So we ended up doing another track with him, Through The Looking Glass, and it absolutely slapped. We were so excited.”
At this point, Raskulinecz’s diary got in the way with Deftones, Evanescence and other lucrative names. And with some of the drums recorded (Raskulinecz, lest we forget, was the recipient of one of Neil Peart’s fabled Drum Workshop kits), they returned to Canada to track the rest of the album at Chalet with David Bottrill, who oversaw most of the production work on Fearless and whose CV includes Peter Gabriel, Tool, Muse and Rush. He also mixed the album.
The result is spectacular, from the waves of gentle synths that introduce Proclamation to the wild 2112-isms of Foot Soldiers Of The Syndicate, and the lovely The Revenants. Crown Lands still sound like peak-kimono Rush for most of the album, but when Prog suggests that the choreographed chaos of the 19-minute title track’s climax might actually have been inspired by Yes’ The Gates Of Delirium, they swiftly agree.
“That was the part we turned to in Relayer,” admits Bowles. “We’re like, ‘Remember that part in Relayer where it goes crazy? This is where we do that!’”
“Cody had this bag full of percussion bits,” adds Comeau, “and we were just knocking it around, yelling and creating that chaos!”
People feel they can’t change the world… I’d challenge them to change what they can within their own lives
It’s also an album that presents a challenge. With all that chaos creation and more overdubs than on previous recordings, the duo have to figure out how they’re going to play it live. “We realised after touring Starlifter and playing an 18-minute song front to back with just two people, we had to figure out what the hero should be in any section. Is it a bass moment? A keyboard moment? A guitar moment? Does Cody need to focus more on singing? Does Cody need to focus more on drums? And for this record, we just said, ‘Whatever –we’ll figure it out later!’”
And they did. In March they released a stunning performance video of Apocalypse, with Comeau and Bowles (stepping out from the drumkit, singing like Jeff Buckley in a coat worthy of Ming the Merciless) joined by guitarist/ keyboardist Adam Inrig and bassist Dan Walton, both from fellow Ontarian prog rockers The Dreamland Band.
“I realised how much more freeing it is for Cody and I to have these parts that we’ve written played by somebody else,” says Comeau. “And then we can just do whatever we want over it.”
“Apocalypse has a lot of harmonies, for the first time ever in Crown Lands, and to be able to sing with other people for the first time is magical,” adds Bowles. “We didn’t want to inhibit the music in any way. We wanted to be the best thing it possibly could be on this record. We do have ideas for an arrangement where we have to scale back to play as a duo. Inevitably, we’re not always going to have our buddies around to help us.”
This article originally appeared in Prog 170 (Image credit: Future)
The extra musicians bring another benefit, as Comeau reveals how Bowles can talk to Walton about Star Wars all day, or to Inrig about Phil Collins and Neil Peart. It’s Crown Lands’ nerdiness that makes their music so beguiling: their pure love for the source material, and that obsessive fan approach to their own take on it.
“To be a progressive rock band in 2026 is a living anachronism,” says Comeau. “I think our role is to push further and further into the niche that we’ve found. Our career has blossomed when we’ve gotten weirder and weirder and fully embrace the music we both love.”
And the message of Apocalypse – are we really doomed? “Someone once said to me that we can only tend to the parts of the garden that we can reach,” says Bowles. “People feel like they can’t change the world, so why bother? But I’d challenge them to think of changing what they can within their own lives, within their own friend groups, within their own circles, and making them the best places to possibly be.
“I think if enough of us do that, it will ripple across the fabric of society and create a better place.”
Apocalypse is on sale now.