Neal Morse Band, the progressive rock group led by Neal Morse, which features Mike Portnoy on drums, is going to release its new, fourth album on August 27th, 2021. It will be titled “Innocence & Danger” and it will be out by Inside Out Music.
Neal Morse Band’s previous two releases were concept albums, however, this new one is a series of unrelated songs. Mike Portnoy says: “After two sprawling back-to-back double concept albums in a row, it was refreshing to get back to writing a collection of unrelated individual songs in the vein of our first album.”
“Innocence & Danger” is a double album by inspiration, rather than design, as Portnoy explains: “As much as we wanted to try and keep it to a single album after having just done two double albums, we wrote so much material that we found ourselves with our third double album in a row. That’s pretty prog.”
There is also plenty in “Innocence & Danger” to excite those prog fans who have a thirst for epics. Neal Morse explains: “There’s one half-hour epic and another that’s about 20 minutes long. I really didn’t realize that they were that long when we were recording them, which I guess is great because if a movie is really good, you don’t realize that it’s three hours long. But there are also some shorter songs: some have poppier elements, some are heavier and some have three-part acoustic sections. I’m excited about all of it, really.”
The album will be released as a limited 2CD+DVD digipak (featuring a making-of documentary), 3LP+2CD boxset, standard 2CD jewelcase and digital album, featuring artwork by Thomas Ewerhard (Transatlantic).
CD 1 (Innocence):
1. Do It All Again
2. Bird On A Wire
3. Your Place In The Sun
4. Another Story To Tell
5. The Way It Had To Be
6. Emergence
7. Not Afraid Pt. 1
8. Bridge Over Troubled Water
CD 2 (Danger):
1. Not Afraid Pt. 2
2. Beyond The Years
