Mirror Image Music Group is releasing “Jeckyll & Hyde,” the first single Eynomia’s second album, Sea of Tears on March 22. The CD release of the album will include a 12-page booklet featuring original artwork to accompany each song.
The follow-up to 2018’s Break Free, Sea of Tears expands on their debut’s Symphonic Rock sound, as the band moves deeper into complex Prog Rock structuring while fine-tuning their sonic approach with cleaner, more layered production.
As on their debut, Eynomia revolves around the dramatic vocals of Phyllis Rutter and Chris Bickley’s powerfully melodic compositions and wild guitar shredding. Ground-shaking blasts of bass and drums make it metal, but intricate keyboard parts partake of the sophistication of progressive rock. The overall sound evokes symphonic prog metal bands like Night Wish and Within Temptation but with an airy, expansive structure that allows the songs—and their listeners—to breathe.
Eynomia formed in late 2015 when Rutter and Bickley met on Facebook and began trading musical ideas. Rutter lived in Minneapolis, where her many artistic achievements and long-time support of the regional music scene won her several Minnesota Music Awards and induction into the Mid-America Hall of Fame. Bickley was a veteran of Thunderhead, a New Orleans prog rock band beloved of Johnny Winter, and the touring guitarist for Rebel Montez and SNL singer Christine Ohlman.
The pair soon discovered a potent working chemistry; each liked what the other was able to do with their songs. They began talking about putting a proper band together. Bickley called in his long-time friend, drummer Gaetano Nicolosi, a conservatory-trained percussionist living in Italy, as well as keyboardist Jimmy Pitts of NorthTale and Eternity’s End. Rutter suggested the bass player Mike LePond, an in-demand session player best known for his work in Symphony X and Silent Assassins.
Sea of Tears was recorded remotely with Eynomia’s far-flung band members recording their parts in their respective home-towns and forwarding them to band leader Chris Bickley to assemble at his home studio in Connecticut. Robert Romagna mixed and mastered the album at his studio in the Austrian Alps.
With Sea of Tears, Eynomia added guest vocalists to this core line-up for the first time. Michael Abdow, solo artist and guitarist for Faith Warning is featured on “To the End,” while Michael Vescera, who has sung with Yngwie Malmsteen as well as the Japanese metal band Loudness, performs on “Mask of Vengeance.”
Highlights include the walloping “Jekyll and Hyde,” whose soaring vocals tell a story about alcohol abuse. “Sometimes you’re Jekyll and sometimes they hide,” Rutter sings, as a spiraling guitar solo erupts, a triumphant take on a dark subject. “That song is about having a loved one who sometimes is one type of person and sometimes they’re not,” explains Bickley. “I think a lot of people can relate that situation where you can’t help them, and they can’t help themselves, and they’re abusive.”
Eynomia tackles another serious issue in “The One,” a surging, swelling nearly pop anthem that Bickley wrote with guitarist Steve Coyne. “We wrote that song about those who don’t exactly fit in ,” says Bickley. “They get picked on, and they feel like they’ve been left behind but they’re not. We see them and we love them.”
Love and prog metal may seem like an odd pairing but Bickley says it goes to the core of Eynomia. “We want people to know that music you can feel still exists. Music that comes from the heart still exists,” he says.
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