By Carl Begai

REDEMPTION’s latest album, This Mortal Coil, can be considered business-as-usual in that it continues the band’s cycle of cranking out new music every two years. And while that may sound like a warning bell heralding a lack of inspiration on the band’s part, this is in fact a very good thing given that guitarist founder Nick van Dyk wrote the album while courting a death sentence. It was as ominous as it sounds; diagnosed with cancer, van Dyk was told in no uncertain terms that his years were numbered. Rather than accept his fate he sought out treatment, simultaneously composing music that paid homage to and built on Redemption’s brand of no-nonsense aggressive prog metal. This Mortal Coil was the end result, loaded with more riffs per square inch compared to Redemption’s previous records and bleeding melody by the bucket. Even when you're only three songs in, there’s no doubt that van Dyk’s ultimate test pushed his inspiration to new heights.

“Absolutely,” van Dyk admits. “Not sonically so much as lyrically. Not to make the whole interview about this, but I was diagnosed with blood cancer three years ago and told that I had three to five years to live. I was fortunate that I was diagnosed by accident and had the opportunity to research the one guy in the world who thinks he can cure it. I went through a pretty intense therapy for it, but as of now the odds are very much in my favour that I’m cured. I’m on some pretty horrible medicine for the next 18 months or so, but it’s all manageable.”
“It’s not that I wanted to write songs or an album about having cancer,” he adds, “but there’s a thought process that one goes through when you’re confronted by your own mortality. It raises all kinds of questions: What the hell have I done to put myself in this position? Life is fleeting, what regrets do I have? Am I choosing a path to get better that’s going to work? How do I take stock of my life in the time I have left? I’d never put myself on the level of Rush or Neil Peart, but when he went through those losses in his life everyone knew the lyrics on the next Rush record were going to be deeply emotional and personal.”
“It’s difficult to go through this without being moved by it, but I didn’t want to make a concept album about me. In the past I’ve talked a lot about relationships, which is something everybody has to deal with in their lives. This time it was about confronting one’s mortality, which is something we as human beings have to do. It was like, ‘Here are some thoughts on that, your mileage may vary.’”

On the musical front, van Dyk continues to steer Redemption through the realms of progressive metal with a definite course in mind. The aggressive edge that appeared on The Origins Of Ruin (2007) and was honed on Snowfall On Judgement Day (2009) has become a Redemption trademark. Additionally, the focus is on the song rather than the prog metal vice of spotlighting technical prowess. Any showboating on This Mortal Coil is served up in tasteful doses that never take away from the big picture.

“Musically, I had two basic ideas,” van Dyk reveals. “First, I like our formula of very aggressive, heavy riffing with melody, so we continued with that. The other thing is that the last album, and Origins to an extent, I let the songwriting happen and they were very organic. I think they flowed very well, nothing sounded forced, and they didn’t sound as progressive as the previous albums like Fullness Of Time. I wanted to edge back a little more and have the material more composed rather than just flowing from one to the next. So, on this album, the opening riff on the record reappears in a keyboard part on the sixth track. Another theme from the first song comes up again on the fourth, eighth and eleventh tracks. There was definitely the thought of composing this by design rather than just letting it happen.”
“At the same time, we’ve never been about these slow mood setting tracks with 19 minutes of rain / spoken verse / instrumental before the actual song starts, which so many prog metal bands are guilty of doing. The Fullness Of Time was very immediate, Origins was even more immediate. I did allow myself about 30 seconds of keyboard build-up on the previous record before it went back to the guitar riff (laughs).”

Van Dyk is also big on bringing out vocalist Ray Alder’s edge from album to album, something that doesn’t necessarily fit with Alder’s duties fronting the comparatively sedate FATES WARNING. This Mortal Coil is Alder’s finest work to date in that regard.

“I made Ray work pretty hard on this record,” says van Dyk, “whether it was unusually aggressive vocal treatments or the chorus to ‘Perfect’, which has 11 vocal tracks. That was a lot of work. It’s this huge multi-layered harmony that Fates Warning has never really explored with his voice.”

Conversation inevitably turns to the prog band stereotype of placing emphasis on shred over substance, and van Dyk’s conscious effort to stay away from it.

“I think it’s a function of my age and poor abilities on my instrument (laughs). I was talking to some people who are fans of Game Of Thrones, which is a really cool TV show. I’ve never read the books, but I joke around saying they are to Lord Of The Rings what Doctor Who is to Star Trek; somehow Game Of Thrones is a lot farther gone on the geek scale. I have no problem with that, and nothing against the writer or his fans, but when are they going to have a fantasy novel where the names of the characters are George and Clyde and Fred rather that Oreliopolos and Sandushious. It’s so overwrought sometimes, and it’s the same thing in prog metal. Why not have something that’s not complicated for the sake of being complicated? Have something that’s a little more interesting than the straightforward stuff that has some twist and turns in there that make sense, but it still grabs you by the balls musically. We’re listening to this music because we want some energy and catharsis out of it.”
“I’ve mentioned this to you before, that I grew up on Bay Area thrash and the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, so it was later on when I got into bands like KANSAS and RUSH and GENESIS. I’m the same age as the DREAM THEATER guys, so while I adore Dream Theater’s music – and I think they’re incredible – they weren’t an influence on me in terms of the ingredients that make up Redemption’s sound. They’re a huge influence in terms of how to cook the meal, but the influences are the band’s I grew up on. I admire Dream Theater for their song craft, but the seeds for mine were sown long before them. That’s why our music is different from what’s come out of the Dream Theater-influenced über-prog movement.”

At press time, Redemption had just completed a handful of live dates in Europe, something van Dyk hopes to build on over the next year as This Mortal Coil takes root.

“We’ve been incredibly fortunate and blessed to be so appreciated by our fans and most critics. My natural inclination is to wonder when the other shoe is going to drop (laughs). It hasn’t translated into big commercial success yet, but we do want to keep getting bigger. We’re not going to live like 23-year-olds, pile into a van and live like animals driving around the country, playing 180 days a year. I’m hoping the good old fashioned way of putting out music, playing some high profile dates, going over to Europe for an extended period of time, will help get the word out and bring us more exposure.”