“Awesome album! I can safely say this will be a fave of the year for me!” – Mike Portnoy
Throughout his long career, Neal Morse has often been a musical collaborator, usually with some of the greatest prog musicians across the world. This time, Morse has brought that collaborative spirit closer to home. The new album by Neal Morse & The Resonance, entitled No Hill For A Climber, will be released on November 8, and the title is taken from a resonant line in Barbara Kingsolver’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Demon Copperhead.
It has its roots at the end of 2023, as Morse explains: “I started thinking about what I was going to do in 2024, and my wife suggested that I should think about doing something with the amazingly talented younger guys that we have here locally - like Chris Riley, Andre Madatian and Philip Martin. I knew just how good they were from playing with them at our Christmas concerts and other events.”
These local musicians were supplemented by Joe Ganzelli (drums) and Johnny Bisaha, who performs much of the lead vocal work, as Morse explains: “While composing No Hill For A Climber, I was hearing a lot of higher range vocals - so I contacted Johnny Bisaha, who came over, listened to the music. loved it and started singing for me. And I immediately thought, ‘Oh man, he's the guy!’.”
Guitarist Andre Madatian answers a few questions in the new interview video below:
To coincide with the the album announcement, the track "All The Rage" was launched with a brand new video. Watch below.
Neal commented: “’All The Rage’ was the second track that I recorded with the guys. I had written it with them in mind and we tracked it pretty quickly. We wanted more of a live feel so we did quite a bit of it without a click track, which became a bit of a challenge for me during the piano solo section! I am super happy with the way the song came out and I really feel like you can hear the energy of the band in the track!”
The album will be available as Limited 2CD Digipak (incl. a second disc of instrumentals), Standard CD Jewelcase, Gatefold 2LP & as Digital Album. Pre-order here.
Tracklisting:
"Eternity In Your Eyes"
"Thief"
"All The Rage"
"Ever Interceding"
"No Hill For A Climber"
"All The Rage" video:
Faithful to any Neal Morse prog album, No Hill For A Climber features two epics (the 28 minute "No Hill For A Climber" and 'Eternity In Your Eyes", which clocks in at 22 minutes) as well as three shorter songs: "Ever Interceding", "All The Rage" and "Thief". The latter, Morse admits, is his current favorite: “It’s so different… it’s in all these different sections, and I’m really happy with the way each part has come out. It’s pretty crazy. There’s even a really cool King Crimson-style instrumental bit in the middle that Chris Riley originally came up with at the Radiant School a couple of years ago.”
For all of these reasons, Morse believes that the whole album is unique, but notes that “if I was going to compare its structure to an album I've done in the past, it might be along the lines of ‘Bridge Across Forever’ or Spock's Beard’s ‘V’; it’s not that it sounds at all like those albums, it’s just structurally similar. It has voices and playing styles and soundscapes that many people will have never heard before! Everyone you work with changes you a little bit, so even I sound a little different on this one, but I hope that everyone will love it!”
