Guitarist Kevin Estrella’s project Pyramids On Mars has a new album being released on December 21, 2019, entitled Edge of the Black. This third full-length from Pyramids On Mars offers up an aural palette of intense instrumental progressive shredding rock that's emotional, provocative and 4-dimensional. Teaming up with BraveWords, Pyramids On Mars is premiering the album's full stream before it officially drops.

 

Estrella adds: "On Edge of The Black, I wanted to put emphasis on songwriting and telling a story. The emphasis is not just on the lead guitar melody, but on the band as a whole. Harmonic variations on repeating themes are strongly utilized; like rhyming phrases in spoken language that allows easier accurate retelling of the original story. This idea of repeating music phrases/themes so the audience can easily recall it and hum it all the way home. Many people would think that being an instrumental guitarist that I must listen to a lot of guitar players. On the contrary, I do not. Yes, I was originally influenced by guitar players like Joe Satriani and Yngwie Malmsteen and spent many years learning their style. But my own sense of identity has come from the music I am most passionate about, which is Baroque Classical Music.

"I am a huge Yngwie Malmsteen fan. I spent two years, in fact, listening to nothing, but Malmsteen and studied his style. But I did not want to become another Malmsteen clone. I realized that in order to play like him, I had to listen to his influences. My life changed when I started listening to Bach, Vivaldi, and Paganini. It was like hearing music for the very first time. I listen to mostly classical music these days. When you listen to Edge of the Black, most of the guitar melodies are actually violin melodies. And many of them are found in my online instructional guitar lessons. There are a few other people who inspired Edge of the Black. You will hear Iron Maiden, Rammstein and Queen influences. Some of the bass parts are inspired by Steve Harris (Iron Maiden) and John Deacon (Queen). Personally Edge of The Black sounds like if Joe Satriani and Yngwie Malmsteen joined Rush."

Preorder Edge Of The Black on Bandcamp.

Tracklisting:

“Blood Moon”
“Nacht Waffen”
“Song Of Light”
“F-22 Raptor”
“The Ambassador”
“Mercury Magnetar”
“Arcturian Rain”
“Time To Believe”
“Arioso Lullaby”
“Whale Song”

“Song Of Light”: