Frost* (the band)

[aliensporebomb]

So I'm a facebook friend of Brand X guitarist John Goodsall and he clued me into this new-ish UK based band called "Frost*".

Well, they're not really new - they date to 2004 and have apparently broken up about every two years, reformed, then broken up again since then. Oh boy.

I'm not sure if it's just "Frost" or "Froststar" or "Frost Asterisk" but every iteration of the name on the albums has an asterisk after it.

From Wikipedia:
"Frost* was an English neo-progressive rock supergroup, formed in 2004 by Jem Godfrey and members of Arena, Kino, and IQ. Frost* released their first studio album, Milliontown, in 2006, before splitting up. In 2008, Godfrey reformed Frost*, adding Darwin's Radio vocalist and guitarist, Declan Burke, to the lineup, and released their second album, Experiments in Mass Appeal. The band disbanded again in 2011"
See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost*


That being said, the guitar player on the first one is particularly interesting - he got a lot of energy and good ideas and they are particularly tight. The second one the writing seems a lot more relevant than just doing prog music but I get the idea this is one of those bands that has a lot of talent and interest but will break up because luck is against them or something. I think by the second record they got tired of being slagged as a progressive band and the original fans who wanted to hear them because they were progressive didn't find enough of that to interest them. However, the song "Welcome to Nowhere" I thought was great on that second effort.

The production really kicks ass too but it's almost like the production got the better of them in spots.

I hear the leader kept breaking the band up because of the fact that he felt uncomfortable being the leader and the time devoted to running the band was killing his health since his bread and butter is being a producer of pop records.

Anyway, check them out:


At first it sounds like 80s King Crimson but towards the end it goes off the rails with a lot of energy and crazy stuff.

Apparently at 8:57 at Frost* shows people chant:
There goes a Big Banana
There goes a Big Banana
There goes a Big Banana
Big Banana
Can't you see?

OK.

[Infinite Ego]

spinning now

[Infinite Ego]

definitely got that Hap, Happy Family thing going on at the end...pretty damn good.... but not as wild a ride, in my opinion. HF seemed to be always on the verge of total destruction.

[aliensporebomb]

Yeah, I don't think I've EVER heard a band like HF with that kind of chaotic energy.

Some of the Mahavishnu live stuff and some of the Magma stuff came in the neighborhood but I still think those guys are the reigning champs of "dark energy" or whatever.

I later found out the keyboardist (Morimoto?) basically was expected by his parents to become a corporate attorney (which he did do, but reluctantly, hence such songs as "Rolling the Law Court" and "Filial Piety at the Dawn").

I wonder how the HF guys fared in the recent earthquake?

[Infinite Ego]

If HF were still active I might have suspected them of causing the earthquake

[aliensporebomb]

Update: I discovered this band 10 days after the bandleader admitted he wasn't comfortable being a bandleader, chief bottle washer and check writer and was basically going thru a nervous breakdown as a result so we won't hear too much from these guys going forward. Except from his "sorry, putting this project on hiatus" was "I'm no use to anybody in an urn..."