Ladies and gentlemen, we have liftoff.
STYX’s highly anticipated and critically acclaimed 16th studio album, THE MISSION, has officially launched into the sonic atmosphere around the world on the band’s label, Alpha Dog 2T/UMe.
The first single, Gone Gone Gone, quickly rocketed up Mediabase’s “Classic Rock” charts. A video can be seen here.
Various interview video clips with singer/guitarist Tommy Shaw and producer Will Evankovich have premiered all week leading up to today’s official release on GuitarPlayer.com, BassPlayer.com, ModernDrummer.com and UltimateClassicRock.com.
THE MISSION–which was recorded over a two-year period at Blackbird Studios, The Shop, and 6 Studio Amontillado in Nashville–displays the best aspects of the ongoing in-harmony musical intersection of the six-man STYX team: the aforementioned guitarist/vocalist Tommy Shaw, co-founding guitarist/vocalist James “JY” Young, keyboardist/vocalist Lawrence Gowan, original bassist Chuck Panozzo, drummer/percussionist Todd Sucherman, and bassist Ricky Phillips.
The new music was created to reflect the viewpoint of the six-person crew enlisted for the maiden voyage of Khedive, the first entry in a new fleet of nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft underwritten by the Global Space Exploration Program (or GSEP, for short). The Khedive team consists of The Pilot, a fully hands-on, seat-of-the-pants born leader; a First Officer who serves as the team’s big-brother figure; an Engineer who is skeptical of every phase of the mission but remains confident in his own abilities to make the best of any technical situation; and a Top-Shelf Trio of science, astrophysics, and survivalist experts.
