Artist description "The band’s self-titled debut is likely the most shamelessly textured, unabashedly spiritual and unapologetically intellectual art rock record since The Yes Album." ---Martin Popoff (VH1.com/Hard Radio)

Music Style Rock ~ Progressive Rock

Musical Influences Rush, Yes, Genesis, Kansas and too many others

Similar Artists Under The Sun ~ UTS

Group Members Chris Shryack ~ Vocals and GuitarKurt Barabas ~ Bass and Bass PedalsMatt Evidon ~ Keyboards and VocalsPaul Shkut ~ Drums and Percussion

Instruments Vocals, Bass, Guitar, Drums and Keyboards

Albums "Under The Sun"

Press Reviews Art Rock For The Next Age A MAGNA CARTA BIOGRAPHY Written by Martin Popoff(Senior Editor of "Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles", HardRadio.com, Contributor to Guitar World, VH1.com)* * *UTSThe term progressive rock just won’t do. Not when you’re discussing the bombastic, purifying, spiritual, cathedral-ceilingedenigma that is California’s Under The Sun Band sage Chris Shryack can wade into the name game with ease, but wade is as faras he will, or should go. Can something this Large and Panoramic be called progressive rock, or even neo-prog? Likely not.Chris amusingly thinks about it for an instance, and decides that he likes the term “cinematic symphonic art rock.Perhaps a good touchstone. But Under The Sun is so much more. Having formed ten years ago, the band’s self-titled debut islikely the most shamelessly textured, unabashedly spiritual and unapologetically intellectual art rock record since The YesAlbum. And above the fray, through the rock, and under the sun, the band codifies and gold-plates the display within songs thatare often immediate, accessible, not too lengthy, and expertly laden with driven power chords. Comparisons with any era ofRush really won’t fly here. Think early Yes, early Genesis, German prog from the ‘70s, Dream Theater riffing, and perhapsbrainiac songwriting from the likes of Peter Hammill or Roy Harper.‘This Golden Voyage’ announces the record’s commencement, and lives up to its promise, tucking the listener into a luxuriantsense of well being, pouring out a lyric that is “a positive affirmation, individual words presented as a tone painting offering thefeeling of a voyage.” But it is track two ‘Tracer’ that contains the record’s most poignant life examination soundtrack, a vaultedlevel of emotion accomplished within the song’s instrumental intro. It is layer upon layer of sunlight, a culmination, a vortex ofspiritual volume, once more, most reminiscent of a band few dare to emulate, Yes. Chris explains. “ ‘Tracer’ was the song wesent to Terry Brown halfway through the making of the record. He heard it and he liked it, which is how we got the gig withhim.” Terry subsequently mixed and sequenced the album, continuing a career path which has put him in touch with many a past,present and future prog metal great, starting with a huge chunk of the Rush catalogue back in the ‘70s.’Tracer’ is kind of an interesting story,” continues Chris. “The intro, all the way up to the first verse, was composed as asoundcheck. We didn’t like to do soundchecks, because by the time you came on, they tended to lose the settings anyway. Sowe sat down and said, ‘why don’t we try to create an opening for the show that begins with each instrument coming in atvarious times?’ Just give the sound guy time to dial in the frequencies, so that by the time the band roars to life, it’s all set up. Sothat’s why it begins with the guitar, then the drums come in, then bass, then keyboards, then I come in on vocals, and then thekeyboardist does a call and response. The keyboardist follows me, then we both come in on harmony, and then we hit this hugepower chord And that’s where we ended it before we went into the first song of the night proper. But when we came to writenew material, it was getting such a good response live and got everybody so excited, we decided to turn it into a full song.”‘Tracer’ is almost a metaphor for how this band is put together.The acrobatic rhythm section of Paul Shkut on drums, and Kurt Barabas on bass propel each song limitlessly. Almosteverything on the record, whether “violent” or simply panoramic and cleansing, benefits from their energy and chops. MattEvidon’s keyboard work is an integral part of the band’s famous high science texturing, while Chris provides a second tsunamiof tones and tunes built from a vast guitar vocabulary. Finally, you’ve got Chris’ elegant and almost surreal vocal work, which,oddly, sound like Chris Squire crossed with a technically trained version of Ozzy Osbourne, something perhaps prophesized bythe band’s name Under The Sun, which is also the name of a bruising old Sabbath song.Throughout the record, one walks calmly (although sometimes with a quick step) through the cycle of life. Like many aCalifornian cliché, Chris is widely read on subjects both literary and new age, his bed stand currently stacked with Castaneda,Poe, Hemingway and Edgar Cayce. It all flows and floats into the man’s words. ‘Seeing Eye God’ “reflects spirituality andsexuality.” ‘Gardens Of Autumn’ addresses time bisecting the path of the muse. “It’s based on the thought that in the latter halfof the year, creativity seems to be more easily harnessed. I know a lot of artists feel that way. The chorus kind of reflectsspiritual elevation. Musically, it just turned out to be kind of a powerhouse rocker.” ‘Perfect World’ is a track that has oftenbeen misinterpreted, something that has concerned Chris to the point where he may do a new version of it someday, presentedin straightforward screenplay format. “That one is a cautionary tale on the contagiousness of evil, and it’s also about feminineempowerment. It was written predominantly by Matt and it goes over really well live. Each chorus maintains the same melodicfigure, but I made sure that each one was different, and they are in fact dialogue stanzas of various characters. So with everychorus that repeats, the story is being furthered by various characters’ pronouncements.’Reflections’ is about being able to look at loss and not collapsing into it,” explains Chris, “not becoming victimized by it, butactually becoming empowered by the lessons it teaches you, to go on and not only be able to love again, but to be better thanyou were previously. By the way, I think ‘Reflections’ is the band favorite on the record. It covers a lot of areas and is verypastoral.” Following ‘Reflections’ is ‘Breakwater’, one of the tracks that might be compared to contemplative Rush from the‘90s. ‘Breakwater’ was brought in by Paul, the drummer, and contains a refrain near the end that rivals ‘Tracer’ as the record’sgiddy, dizzying emotional high point. Chris calls the lyrical theme “strength over adversity”, symbolized by a breakwater,emphasized by the tracks crashing wave effect. Anchoring the middle of the record is the album’s longest track ‘The TimeBeing’, presented in three parts. “That song is basically a musical horror story. It’s supposed to reflect the paranoia of thepassage of time. And the name The Time Being is a metaphor for that, the passage of time as this physical monster. My imageof it was always this slow-moving vortex that literally eats up everything in its wake as it slowly moves across the landscape,male and female, yin and yang, a unisexual being.Elsewhere, as this voyage through realms earthly and ethereal cycles towards a crashing and serene conclusion, we get shafts ofKansas-like rockery like ‘Dream Catcher’, which Chris describes thusly. “’Dream Catcher’ tells the story of a native Americanmedicine man. The theme is basically that when you die, you’ll be judged by what you leave behind. And if you are aboutpositive imagery and positive thoughts and positive works of art, then your destiny will be reflected by what you’ve done. If youare about negativity and darkness, then you are pretty much guaranteed that you will reap what you sow at the other end of thespectrum. So when the song opens, a Native American is sitting by the campfire, and he’s dying, and the last thing he is leavingis his dream catcher. Dream catchers are known to basically weave out nightmares. They are very beneficial in healing circles.And he sits by the campfire weaving it. And in his culture, and part of this is fictional, dying is actually an exalted holy state, andpeople have to earn it to check out with any sort of majesty, of which this particular man has been bestowed. As he dies, aneagle appears out of the sky and grabs the dream catcher from under his dying hands and carries it into the universe, which iswhy it segues into the eagle caw and the final track on the record.Ah yes, the final track. ‘From Henceforth Now And Forever’ is a masterpiece of emotional deliverance, built somewhat like aFloydian exhalation, laced with sound effects, deliberately flowing to the sea like the River Of Life. We’ll leave the final word toChris. “That one is just this overall, positive, healing mantra, that combines all the disparate themes, from the surreal violence of‘Perfect World’, to the more celestial, cosmic positive affirmative-laden tracks like ‘This Golden Voyage’. Those are the twoopposite ends of the spectrum. ‘Now And Forever’ weaves them all together under one mantra of peace and hope throughdarkness. It’s one melodic statement repeated as a mantra. It kind of placates the violence and takes the listener off on a goodlyrical note. And then we make sure that the last four minutes of the record are designed just to really let it all out on a hugeexplosive note. The lightning crack at the end is symbolic of all that; it cleanses all the ideas that came prior to it, and it evencleanses all the first ten years it finally took to get our first record out (laughs).

Location Studio City, CA - USA

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