If you have been following tours coming up this Fall you might have seen the name Bend Sinister popping up both in the US and Europe.
The Vancouver prog/rock group will be opening for Bigelf (w/Mike Portnoy) in Europe starting October 29th and most recently opened for Flying Colors on the supergroup’s three US dates. This will be the band’s second time playing in Europe and first time in a few years.
Original formed by singer/keyboardist Dan Moxon as an instrumental group while he was in college, Bend Sinister has gone through various lineups since putting out its first album in 2005. The current lineup, together since 2010, is comprised of Moxon, guitarist Joseph Blood, bassist Matt Rhode, drummer Jason Dana. The foursome bring with them an impressive list of influences ranging from Queen, Pink Floyd, Supertramp, Black Sabbath, The Beatles and more.
Their latest album, Animals, was released early this year and was recorded by Grammy nominated producer Joe Marlett (Foo Fighters, Blink 182, Switchfoot, Revolver) who first heard the band when they performed at Arizona’s That Damn Show festival.
The album Animals contains a variety of styles from the bombastic Queen influenced opening track Best Of You to the Jellyfish stylings of Fancy Pants to the synth-pop of You Remind Me. Dan Moxon explains, “I don’t every like to typecast ourselves as anything, we just tend to write music however it comes out. As soon as you try to write music a certain way it seems like it doesn’t come off as sincere. It’s just doing whatever comes naturally in terms of music. When you look back, I think that our first record was deemed a very prog rock record and we sort of were going in between elements of being considered typecast as a prog rock band versus just being a rock’n’roll band or an indie rock band. So we haven’t really found out where we fit in the spectrum because we try not to do anything specific, we just do our own thing.”
Mike Portnoy selected the group to open for Flying Colors and has been championing the band for some time. “He’s been a supporter of the band for quite a while”, says Moxon. “There was some talk back and forth on Twitter that he was a fan of our album Small Fame back in 2012 and when we were on the Flying Colors tour he said he’d been listening to the band since 2007, so been a long time fan of the band. When we put out Small Fame in 2012 he sort of started a twitter chat about having us play on something and for a while now we’ve been trying to line up a tour so we can play on one of his things. We were gonna go down and play the Prog Nation cruise but it didn’t work out, timing wise. Initially we had booked the Flying Colors dates because he wanted us to come down and play and when the Bigelf thing happened that was sort of secondary but it turned out great that he was gonna join them on drums. So yeah, he’s been a great supporter of our band and a really cool dude.”
Once the tour is over the band intend to take some time off and get back to work on the follow up to Animals for next year.
You can find out more about Bend Sinister via the band’s website or Facebook page.
Check out The Prog Report at http://progreport.com/.
