As a music fan, I am always excited to hear new music. Whether or not I will actually like it is a whole other story, but I love new music. I love it, even more, when members of my favorite bands step aside and something different. I loved it when members of Jess and the Ancient Ones did the Exploding Eyes Orchestra, and I love it that two members of Virginia based prog/rock band Brave stepped out to do something of their own.
While exciting, I find myself a bit nervous when listening to a favorite artist of mine doing something different. Will I like it? Will I hate it? Brave guitarists Matt Kozar and Scott Loose (also a member of While Heaven Wept) and Brave bassist Ben Kelly have released a new album by their brand new project, Stellar Death. Being that I am a massive fan of their work in Brave, I was going to be listening to this material with a critical ear. I set the bar high for Stellar Death, and with their eight-song debut full-length, Fragments of Light, that bar was cleared by a landslide.
Recording all of the guitars and programming the drums, Kozar and Loose tapped into something unique and found a way to unleash their inner creativity in a way that feels cathartic. It’s almost as if Brave is their eldest child while Stellar Death is a newly born entity that has emerged strong and is being nurtured to be its own entity.
The opening track “The Astronomer” is an excellent example of this. One moment the song is this beautiful melodic, spacy kind of composition, and then all of a sudden, it goes into a sort of early Dream Theater progressive metal vibe. My favorite track, “Betelguese,” is an ambient, mellow dramatic song that feels how one feels at the end of a roller coaster ride. It has this feeling of coasting after a whirlwind of chaos that gave me goosebumps. I could not help but close my eyes, hang my head, and take this song in.
The song “Everywhere and Nowhere” has a doom kind of progression that reminds me of While Heaven Wept at times, but then it turns into the ethereal and ambient. The melodic changes in this song are sparse, which creates a floating, spacey feeling.
The aptly titled “Afterglow” closes the album out with a Pink Floyd vibe. The spirit of David Gilmour is present here but not copied. Loose and Kozart took that sound and energy and turned it into something unique. This song is one of those perfect “album closers” that I love so much.
The overall vibe of Fragments of Light is, to put it simply, bi-polar at times, which I love. Fragments of Light covers so much ground that it never gets boring. As much as the songs vary in heaviness, mood, and intensity, there is a perfect flow from song to song. Much attention was paid to the fantastic production and playing and the sequencing of the songs, which creates the musical journey of Fragments of Light.
Stellar Death has made an incredible debut into the world of music, and to pin a genre tag on them would be not just impossible but insulting. Fragments of Light is a collection of instrumental music that is warm, relaxing, tense, and even unsettling at times. That being said, this is an album that any lover of instrumental music can and should appreciate. Add this one to your collection, folks. You’ll be glad you did.
Buy the Digital Album Here: https://stellardeath.bandcamp.com/album/fragments-of-light
Stream it on Spotify Here: https://open.spotify.com/album/46O4nJRPDZYEXEd2paDcPe?si=8RrZtArCQNmdFldn5doFew
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