Speaking of Mike Portnoy, the other project he is involved in, Sons Of Apollo, will be releasing MMXX on January 17 via InsideOut Music. This is their second studio release, following on the heels of the live release Live With The Plovdiv Psychotic Symphony (Aug 2019). You can watch a video for the first single, Goodbye Divinty below.

About the track, Mike Portnoy comments, "From the minute we finished writing 'Goodbye Divinity,' I knew we had our album opener and the first release off the album. I even remember posting on social media how excited I was about the song the day I tracked it! The song has an immediacy that grabs you right away: great riffs, flashy playing and hooky vocal melodies. All of the elements that make up the SOA sound.

Hard to believe we are already in the year 2020! Are we going to look back? Well, hindsight is 2020. So, yes, probably, but not here, not now.

Looking ahead to what 2020 will bring us in terms of new or reissued music, although we have the "facts" all listed in our "Release Calendar," because we get more info and quotes and such about these new releases, we wanted to pass along the "salient bits," as it were.

Let's start with The Neal Morse Band, who will release a live album on March 6 called The Great Adventour - Live In Brno 2019." This will be the first release under their new contract with InsideOut Music, who had released his second solo album It's Not Too Late in 2002, and 2015's The Grand Experiment.

UK progressive rock band Pallas are taking a look back at their past with the first in a series of archival releases, The Edge Of Time, to be released December 12, 2019 via Bandcamp only (at this time) available "in many formats including lossless, complete with a selection of alternate versions." But this not your typical archival release:

From the band's press release:

It was reported yesterday that André Matos, one time vocalist with Angra and Shaman, passed away on June 8, 2019, the result of a heart attack; he was 47.

Matos is probably best known for fronting Angra, the Brazillian classically-influenced progressive/speed metal band. Their recording debut came with 1993's Angel's Cry, followed by 1996's Holy Land (my personal favourite). A couple of EPs and album later, three-fifths of Angra had left, including Matos.

Mexico's Cast are celebrating their 40th Anniversary this year and celebrating in two ways. One, on October 20, 2018, Cast will perform live at CEART Mexicali - the concert is free. Visit their website for details.

Secondly, the band will this month release a live Blu-Ray, Sinfonico Live - Cast playing live accompanied by an orchestra. The band are taking pre-orders now.

Listening to the trailer (see below), I can say it sounds marvelous!

Another news item from Frontiers to note is their signing of the legendary producer/musician Alan Parsons.

Prog fans associate Parsons mostly with his work as engineer on Abbey Road (The Beatles) and Dark Side Of The Moon (Pink Floyd), aside from his own recordings under his name and the Alan Parsons Project banner. His list of credits is far longer and far broader.

Italy's Frontiers label releases a wide variety of rock titles from AOR to Progressive Rock to Metal. In the next coming months, that is no different; we list them below. What caught our attention especially was the recent by Robert Berry, under the 3.2 moniker.

A ways back, 1988 to be exact, Robert Berry, along with the late Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer, released The Power Of Three as 3. The album yielded the single "Talkin' 'Bout," which reach #9 on Billboard Magazine's charts.

Fast forward to 2015, when, as the album info from Frontiers notes:

Sad news to report, as we learned the other day that guitarist and Progress Records owner Hansi Cross has passed away having been battling cancer.

While I didn't know Hansi personally, I had reviewed a few of his releases, under the bandname Cross, as well as a selection of titles by others that he released via his record label. There was even an occassion where Hansi asked if I would be interested in providing artwork for an upcoming album. While that that never came to fruition, I was honored that he thought I might have (even a smidgen) of talent for it.