Craig Locicero has set expectations for the first Forbidden album in sixteen years by warning people off one of them. "If you're expecting just thrash metal, you might be disappointed," is how the interview was headlined, and he meant it as a description rather than an apology.
"Forbidden, our lane is way over here. We are so different in many aspects, and having a great singer like Russ Anderson was the first and foremost thing," he told The Adventures Of Pipeman. "Russ, he could do anything, and so that opened doors for us to be just as much heavy metal as it did thrash metal. And this album, I feel like, is just as much heavy metal as it is thrash metal as it is prog."
He is honest about how the back catalogue came out too. "Your first album, you don't know what you're doing. I was 15 when I started writing Forbidden Evil and then 18 when we recorded it, and clueless." The growth came with Twisted Into Form and Tim Calvert, when the two guitarists started harmonising deliberately. Distortion and Green arrived "in turbulent times where nobody gave a damn about thrash metal", so the band wrote them for themselves.
The new record is the first with Norman Skinner singing, Chris Kontos drumming and Jeremy Von Epp on guitar, and the first since Omega Wave in 2010.