ARRIVER

Formed in summer 2004 in Chicago, IL, by Dan Sullivan (guitar) Rob Sullivan (bass) and Dan MacAdam (guitar) ARRIVER honed a sound that seamlessly blends classic and modern strains of rock, metal, and prog into a vicious hybrid of ass-kickery.When a colleague of Rob's showed him a strange paragraph of text mysteriously conjured overnight by voice recognition software, ARRIVER had their manifesto, from which the mythology of their debut album "Vanlandingham and Zone" was born.With "The Simon Mann EP" ARRIVER continues to find inspiration through narrative. But while "Vanlandingham and Zone" created a new fiction to explore, "The Simon Mann EP" sticks to the facts of the recent past: three songs based on a failed coup attempt in by an ill-starred cabal of mercenaries lead by Simon Mann, former SAS commando and member of British High society. Title track "Simon Mann" is built around a harmonized atonal guitar melody and a seductive sales pitch by its namesake. The frantic "Splodge of Wonga" evokes the panic of the mission gone awry. Finally, "This Dark Corner of the Continent" imagines the internal dialogue of a busted mercenary rotting in a sub-saharan prison. The disjointed riff grooves impossibly before exploding into grindcore and agonized howling over the coda.Other changes are apparent with this release as well: most notably ARRIVER brought in long time comrade-in-rock Joe Kaplan to drum. With Joe, ARRIVER began pushing tempos and time more aggressively. Vocals evolved to match and what has emerged is a decidedly harder sound. ARRIVER shows confidence in their craft and willingness to bulldoze sub-genres of metal, prog, and hardcore.Hot on heels of this release will be ARRIVER's second full-length, an as-of-yet untitled retelling of the destruction of the Russian Navy at the hands of the Japanese in 1904.