Heresy - eclectic?

Heresy formed in the 70s, put out indie albums in 1985 and 1989, and just put out a new album. Based on the U.S. The new (December 2016) album is Prufrock, containing a 40+ minute 16-song adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", plus bonus tracks, largely from the 1985 release previously only available on vinyl.

Bio from their web site:

"Who is Heresy?

Well, first, who we're not.

We're not the British punk rock band from the 80s. Or any of a number of other bands that have apparently used the name over the years. This Heresy is an American progressive rock band, who started playing New York clubs in the 70s, released two albums in the 80s, and is now back together, playing shows and releasing new material. Some of our shows are all original, and some include covers of the likes of Jethro Tull, ELP, The Who, Genesis, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Yes, Cream, Bowie, Beatles and the Moody Blues. If you listen hard enough, you can probably hear influences of all those groups in our own material, though (hopefully!) we don't sound quite like any of them."

Besides the bands listed there, I think you can also hear hints of Strawbs, VDGG, Ambrosia, Renaissance, Nektar. Even some gentle giant-ish-ness in the vocal harmonies. Depends on the song.

Discography in reverse chronological order:

2016: Prufrock (23 tracks)
Streamable on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/album/1cqaJqnCpxR3PWKf1u5MHx

(Note that the first 16 songs comprise a single lyrical work and are intended to be listened to in that sequence. It starts kind of prog-folky and then grows in intensity.)

1989: A Far Cry (19 tracks)
Streamable on Spotify at https://play.spotify.com/album/1Z6QAShJcLXAzWZVUGBigy

(There are some non-prog songs, you might want to skip tracks 2, 4, 9, 16... and some others are borderline... but most have significant prog elements)

1985: At The Door (10 tracks)
vinyl only, not streamable, though 6 of its 10 songs are now also on the 2016 Prufrock release

web site: www.heresy.rocks

Rare live Heresy footage circa 1990:

^  Well I've added more stuff to existing threads loads of times and never yet had a rap on the knuckles from the admins for doing it. Extra samples that can be easily played from within the thread are always useful to my mind, and the only comments I have ever seen which have frowned on the practice have applied to instances where a whole load of YouTube videos have been embedded in a suggestion thread (and yeah, I've been guilty of this myself too on more than one occasion ) - the reason being that this makes the page take ages to load for people with a slow internet connection. Better to just give them as clickable hyperlinks that open up the YouTube page in another tab (or window) - or a playlist if one is available - if you've got a lot of tubes to add to a thread, but one or two fully embedded ones as we currently have here certainly ain't gonna hurt (imho).

Cool. Okay, then here's a link to another youtube video. Note that it has TWO songs in it (i.e. it fades to black, and then at about 3:40, a second song begins)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFSnpNvOdvU

EDIT: Note that this has essentially been superseded by the complete 40 minute video now posted below.



Edited by anotherscott - January 17 2017 at 12:27

Here's the video for the new album. It includes 15 of the 23 songs, and as the words are a single continuous poem, it is presented here as a single 40 minute work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZRC3b4p4EI

The album is also on Amazon with a couple of very nice reviews
http://amzn.to/2hcki7n

and it's on iTunes

Edited by anotherscott - January 17 2017 at 12:31

Classifying is always tricky!

Some new info... A few songs from the new album are on the playlist of this week's Dutch prog program at http://xymphonia.aafm.nl/latest.html where they also posted about the band and the album, including (translated) "Heresy is melodic, accessible symphonic rock with a slight folk rock influence." So I guess that's at least one more opinion about what they sound like!

(That link is always for the current show, but for people seeing this in the future, you'll be able to check the Archive section for Sunday 05 Februari 2017 Show No. 1235.)

(I know Heresy has also been played on some prog college radio and internet stream programs, I could name some, but I don't know if that's relevant?)

Edited by anotherscott - February 05 2017 at 12:32

Cool, thanks!

Hi